I don't know, either you're on board with Wicker Park or you're not. I think you have to look past its definite shortcomings to wring out the quality: for Josh Hartnett's stony, inarticulate performance and Matthew Lillard's completely inappropriate casting, you then have Diane Kruger and Rose Byrne, both excellent in
their roles. Byrne especially does fantastic work with the least screen time of the four; she shows up late and to say much would be a spoiler, but she really digs into every angle of the character and presents some interesting complications in the story. For every time the soundtrack features some God-awful rock song highlighting a "torrid" sex scene, it'll find an inventive and challenging combination like a modern dance sequence set to Mum, or a lonely stroll through the park scored by Broken Social Scene. And considering how convoluted and ultimately kind of silly the plot gets, it's surprising that it offers up such an understated look at love versus obsession, and how effectively it blurs the line sometimes. I wasn't really aware of the world around me when this came out but I imagine it was marketed pretty heavily as a typical thriller. In that regard, it's an utter disappointment; the worst that could possibly happen to poor Matthew is being trapped in a moderately uncomfortable corporate marriage. If the stakes don't seem higher, I think that's partially Hartnett's fault, because he just doesn't sell much to me in the scope of this movie. I think that this falls in the same category of film as Enduring Love, where the sum is worth more than its parts and everything seems to gel despite itself. Something you'd watch once, dwell on fondly and never come back to. Which is good, but really, this film could have been better.
September 14, 2009
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