Mama's Boy: PHILOMENA

When we first meet Philomena Lee, it’s easy to tell she’s not herself today. Her eyes are misty, distant, lost in thought. Her adult daughter, heading out to work, stops to tell her mother goodbye when the old woman tells her some surprising news. “He’d be 50 today,” she says, holding up a faded black and white photograph of a toddler. Her daughter is confused, a response that quickly turns to surprise when her mother tells her that fifty years earlier she had a child out of wedlock who was taken away from her by the nuns at the abbey in which she was living. The mystery of who this child is powers Stephen Frears’ Philomena, which becomes a sweet and delicate story about an elderly woman who decides to track down her long lost son and the kind and patient journalist who helps her.

Judi Dench stars in the title role. It’s a wonderful performance in which she convincingly inhabits the meek and polite personality of Philomena. The son taken from her has weighed on her thoughts for so long. At the time, she believed what the nuns told her, that carrying the child, suffering the pains of childbirth, and ultimately letting the baby go is God’s way of punishing her for giving in to sinful lust. And yet there’s been a nagging doubt growing in the back of her mind. How can she, through no fault of her own, be denied access to a life she brought into this world? She now can hardly believe the abstract concept of her missing child is now quite possibly becoming a reality. Her main question is simply, “has he thought of me?”

Steve Coogan, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Pope from the true story as told by Martin Sixsmith, plays the journalist who helps her. He’s here for some wry commentary and sweet banter with the woman. His drive to write an article starts simply as a career move, a way to bounce back from some minor scandal that bounced him out of a high profile position. But he quickly comes to care for Philomena, and she for him. There’s affection there, a sort of maternal warmth between them that becomes, through their journey of investigation, a stand-in for the son she hopes to find. Dench, a quiet marvel, her face creased with every emotion implied while she puts on a brave face, stands in contrast to Coogan, who towers over her and yet finds such compassion underneath his dry wit.

It’s a study in empathy. By the time all is revealed, Coogan has become so invested in the story he’s been researching, he’s far more outwardly emotional than Philomena herself. Dench and Coogan make for a most charming odd-couple as the film follows a sturdy road movie path. It’s simple and nice, tracing comfortable paths to a conclusion that hits with some force. In the end, it is not shocking revelations or cruelty, but simple acts of kindness and forgiveness that are truly moving. Here, Dench and Coogan sell a climax that tidily answers questions raised in ways unexpectedly satisfying and complete. It is done perhaps too tidily, condensing hard real life into something that plays easily on screen. But so what? It plays.

Frears, a quiet, steady presence behind the camera, allows the film to simply exist with a minimum of fuss or insistence, recording fine performances from a skilled cast. Like many of his films – The Queen, High Fidelity, Dangerous Liaisons – he lets his excellent actors do the heavy lifting, bringing out the script's emotions as they sit pinned in by nice, solid framing. Where it could have gone broad and treacly, it instead finds fragile grace notes of performance that lend it the grace and dignity it deserves. It’s so nice and warm, capturing two mismatched characters on a journey of kindness in performances that are quietly funny and poignant.

Cheri (2009)

The best moment in Cheri comes late in the film as the camera lingers on a close-up of a woman’s face as the narrator matter-of-factly states that a character’s demise is the direct result of wanting this woman but being unable to get her back. As the statement spills from the narrator’s mouth we stare at the woman, this sad beauty who stares out at us. Then the shot continues, lingering a moment longer than expected. It’s devastating, or rather, nearly so. To be truly devastating, the film would have had to work harder to be less of a frothy bauble, or at least more fun.

The film stars Michelle Pfeiffer as an aging courtesan in early 1900s France who finds herself falling in love with Cheri (Rupert Friend), a much younger man. They have an affair that is complicated only by the fact that Pfeiffer is friends with Cheri’s mother (Kathy Bates) who wishes to marry her son off to the daughter of another high society member. The movie titters and gossips along with these, and other, wealthy ladies, flitting from one scandal to another, ruminating on love lives and dishing all the dirt.

This is an exquisite froth that never truly delights, a romance that never truly swoons, and a drama that stays too surface to move. As a soap-operatic melodrama, Cheri never kicks up enough heat. The characters are superficially developed, leaving the audience out of the affair. There’s never a sense that the characters care about each other. Cheri, and all those around him, remain blank canvases. For all the light, delightful moments from Pfeiffer and Bates, there’s a never a real sense of what makes these people behave the ways they do, other than vague nods towards the societal context.

The film is well mounted, handsomely shot by Stephen Frears, who has made great films in the past (most recently The Queen and High Fidelity) and will hopefully make them again in the future, but this film is nothing more than pretty, vacant, people moving through pretty landscapes and architecture, which brings me back to the narrator (Stephen Frears), who observes and comments on it all. Most of the important events in the film, both internal and external, are either redundantly narrated or narrated without being shown at all. He’s (apologies to Mr. Frears, who’s voice is certainly pleasant) a total detriment, only adding to the sense of forced frivolity, the sense of watching someone else play with dolls while we strain over his shoulder to watch and understand.