For a movie with the word "feast" in the title,
Feast of Love is a strangely undernourished and unsatisfying movie. This is a movie about a group of people whose lives revolve around a coffee shop, finding love, and talking to a wise old man who has nothing but time to talk about love, life, and relationships. Love is found and lost, but the movie keeps on forgetting to show what happens in between. This is the kind of movie where couples can have bitter break ups, but be friends again a couple scenes later, simply because the narrator tells us they're friends again. I found myself increasingly frustrated as the story went on. Here is a movie with a great look and a wonderful cast, but it has nothing to show for it.
The coffee shop where everyone in this movie gathers is run by a man named Bradley (Greg Kinnear). Bradley is unlucky in love. About 15 minutes after the opening credits have rolled, his first wife (Selma Blair) leaves him after she finds herself attracted to a woman she met during a softball game. Barely before he's found time to look for a new place to live, another woman walks into his life - this time a real estate agent named Diana (Radha Mitchell from
Silent Hill). They marry, but once again, she's hiding a secret from him in that she's also involved with another man named David (Billy Burke), who doesn't feel that Diana loves Bradley and that she's making a mistake. She eventually agrees with David, and walks out on Bradley also. The film also follows one of Bradley's employees at the shop, a young man named Oscar (Toby Hemingway). He falls head over heals in love with Chloe (Alexa Davalos) the second she walks in the shop, and so does she with him. Unfortunately, they're both poor, and Oscar is stuck with a verbally and physically abusive drunken father (Fred Ward) who likes to hide in the bushes and threaten people with his knife. All of these people have one thing in common. They all share their problems with Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman), an old man who is a regular at the coffee shop, and gives free love advice and talks philosophic about life at a moment's notice. He never seems to be there to buy anything, he just sits at a table and helps people out with their problems all day, then goes home to his wife and talks about the things he talked about with other people. When he's not doing that, he's narrating the movie and talks philosophic about love and life to us the audience.
Feast of Love is a simple minded movie dealing with complex issues. This is a movie where the wise old man with pain in his past (Harry's adult son died of a drug overdose the previous year) holds all the answers, and delivers those answers with such an omnipresent tone of voice, you'd think Morgan Freeman was repeating his performance as God from
Bruce Almighty. The main characters take his advice, and are always better off for it. But, they have to make a lot of mistakes first. The film is set during an 18 month period according to the subtitles at the bottom of the screen that keep track of the passage of time, and during that time, Bradley goes through three different marriages, gets divorced twice, and falls in love two times with a total stranger who seemingly agrees to marry him after knowing him for about a month by my estimate. This is a movie that obviously wants to take a long, hard look at relationships, but it strangely doesn't seem to even want to talk about relationships. For Bradley, we keep on seeing only the beginning and the end of the relationship. When he marries his second wife Diana, they're getting separated about five scenes later after a disastrous dinner party where her secret is revealed. Don't cry for the guy, though, because he finds love again about 10 minutes later, who agrees to get together with him supposedly because they both share the same opinion on what love is. After this initial meeting, the film flashes forward 6 months later, and they're living happily together, though we never actually get to see why Bradley is finally happy with this girl. All the hell this movie puts the poor guy through, and it can't even afford to give him anything but an assumed happy ending.
What's most strange about this movie is that it seems to want to completely skim over the hardships and problems that come with love. It's not just Bradley who gets involved in an almost comically underwritten relationship. The storyline that focuses on the other main couple, young Oscar and Chloe, is equally underdeveloped. They meet when she comes into the coffee shop, looking for a job. He gives her an interview, then the next time we see them, they're in bed having sex together. We're introduced to Oscar's evil drunken father, whose character doesn't really amount to much. He says a few threats, pulls his knife out a couple times, then he gets punched in the face by another character and is never seen again. The movie hints that the young couple are also facing money problems. So desperate are they for money that they agree to shoot a porno video for some easy cash. Once again, not much is made of this crisis, as all of their problems are solved by talking to the Morgan Freeman character. Things seem to work out pretty well for the two, until a situation that was predicted by an eerily accurate fortune teller that Chloe visits about halfway through the movie occurs. This is a movie that continuously hits on the major scenes, but it gives us none of the minor moments that are supposed to endear us to the characters. One event after another keeps on happening to these people, and we don't care, because the movie refuses to let us get close to them. It's also kind of hard to worry how these characters will get out of their current situation, when the all-knowing old man is always at arm's length.
Because the movie refuses to slow down and give us something to care about, the characters suffer and so do the performances. This is tragic, because you can tell that everyone involved is making an effort. If the movie itself stinks, it's certain not due to a lack of effort. Greg Kinnear and Morgan Freeman are wonderful actors, but neither is given anything to attach their performance on. Kinnear is forced to just blindly go through a series of bad relationships before he arrives at his happy ending. Freeman is as warm and as wonderful as he ever has been. No one could sell the role of a wise old man who hangs out at either a coffee shop or a park bench all day better than he can. The problem is, that's all there is to his character. His relationship with his wife (Jane Alexander) and their grieving over their dead son is curiously only mentioned whenever it's convenient for the movie. He never comes across as an actual character in the story, he just always seems to conveniently be there for the main characters whenever they need him. As the young couple in love, Toby Hemingway and Alexa Davalos are warm in their respective roles as Oscar and Chloe, but never get to build a relationship any deeper than just physical attraction. The movie keeps on insisting that they are deeply in love with each other, but we never get a true sense of it.
Before I close this review, I want to mention one other odd thing about
Feast of Love. As I mentioned earlier, about halfway through the movie, Chloe goes to see a psychic who gives her a prediction so accurate, we know how the movie's going to end at about the one hour mark. Not only does she predict what will happen to the couple, she's even able to foresee what Oscar will be hungry for when Chloe returns home. Both of her predictions come true, but strangely, Chloe treats this with casual indifference. She doesn't even go back to the fortune teller after the predictions come true, and ask the woman what her winning Lotto numbers are. Forget focusing on these couples in love, I want a movie on this fortune teller and how she was able to so accurately predict everything that would happen. My guess is she cheated and read the script in advance.
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For a movie with the word "feast" in the title, Feast of Love is a strangely undernourished and unsatisfying movie. This is a movie about a group of people whose lives revolve around a coffee shop, finding love, and talking to a wise old man who has nothing but time to talk about love, life, and relationships. Love is found and lost, but the movie keeps on forgetting to show what happens in between. This is the kind of movie where couples can have bitter break ups, but be friends again a couple scenes later, simply because the narrator tells us they're friends again. I found myself increasingly frustrated as the story went on. Here is a movie with a great look and a wonderful cast, but it has nothing to show for it.
The coffee shop where everyone in this movie gathers is run by a man named Bradley (Greg Kinnear). Bradley is unlucky in love. About 15 minutes after the opening credits have rolled, his first wife (Selma Blair) leaves him after she finds herself attracted to a woman she met during a softball game. Barely before he's found time to look for a new place to live, another woman walks into his life - this time a real estate agent named Diana (Radha Mitchell from Silent Hill). They marry, but once again, she's hiding a secret from him in that she's also involved with another man named David (Billy Burke), who doesn't feel that Diana loves Bradley and that she's making a mistake. She eventually agrees with David, and walks out on Bradley also. The film also follows one of Bradley's employees at the shop, a young man named Oscar (Toby Hemingway). He falls head over heals in love with Chloe (Alexa Davalos) the second she walks in the shop, and so does she with him. Unfortunately, they're both poor, and Oscar is stuck with a verbally and physically abusive drunken father (Fred Ward) who likes to hide in the bushes and threaten people with his knife. All of these people have one thing in common. They all share their problems with Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman), an old man who is a regular at the coffee shop, and gives free love advice and talks philosophic about life at a moment's notice. He never seems to be there to buy anything, he just sits at a table and helps people out with their problems all day, then goes home to his wife and talks about the things he talked about with other people. When he's not doing that, he's narrating the movie and talks philosophic about love and life to us the audience.
Feast of Love is a simple minded movie dealing with complex issues. This is a movie where the wise old man with pain in his past (Harry's adult son died of a drug overdose the previous year) holds all the answers, and delivers those answers with such an omnipresent tone of voice, you'd think Morgan Freeman was repeating his performance as God from Bruce Almighty. The main characters take his advice, and are always better off for it. But, they have to make a lot of mistakes first. The film is set during an 18 month period according to the subtitles at the bottom of the screen that keep track of the passage of time, and during that time, Bradley goes through three different marriages, gets divorced twice, and falls in love two times with a total stranger who seemingly agrees to marry him after knowing him for about a month by my estimate. This is a movie that obviously wants to take a long, hard look at relationships, but it strangely doesn't seem to even want to talk about relationships. For Bradley, we keep on seeing only the beginning and the end of the relationship. When he marries his second wife Diana, they're getting separated about five scenes later after a disastrous dinner party where her secret is revealed. Don't cry for the guy, though, because he finds love again about 10 minutes later, who agrees to get together with him supposedly because they both share the same opinion on what love is. After this initial meeting, the film flashes forward 6 months later, and they're living happily together, though we never actually get to see why Bradley is finally happy with this girl. All the hell this movie puts the poor guy through, and it can't even afford to give him anything but an assumed happy ending.
What's most strange about this movie is that it seems to want to completely skim over the hardships and problems that come with love. It's not just Bradley who gets involved in an almost comically underwritten relationship. The storyline that focuses on the other main couple, young Oscar and Chloe, is equally underdeveloped. They meet when she comes into the coffee shop, looking for a job. He gives her an interview, then the next time we see them, they're in bed having sex together. We're introduced to Oscar's evil drunken father, whose character doesn't really amount to much. He says a few threats, pulls his knife out a couple times, then he gets punched in the face by another character and is never seen again. The movie hints that the young couple are also facing money problems. So desperate are they for money that they agree to shoot a porno video for some easy cash. Once again, not much is made of this crisis, as all of their problems are solved by talking to the Morgan Freeman character. Things seem to work out pretty well for the two, until a situation that was predicted by an eerily accurate fortune teller that Chloe visits about halfway through the movie occurs. This is a movie that continuously hits on the major scenes, but it gives us none of the minor moments that are supposed to endear us to the characters. One event after another keeps on happening to these people, and we don't care, because the movie refuses to let us get close to them. It's also kind of hard to worry how these characters will get out of their current situation, when the all-knowing old man is always at arm's length.
Because the movie refuses to slow down and give us something to care about, the characters suffer and so do the performances. This is tragic, because you can tell that everyone involved is making an effort. If the movie itself stinks, it's certain not due to a lack of effort. Greg Kinnear and Morgan Freeman are wonderful actors, but neither is given anything to attach their performance on. Kinnear is forced to just blindly go through a series of bad relationships before he arrives at his happy ending. Freeman is as warm and as wonderful as he ever has been. No one could sell the role of a wise old man who hangs out at either a coffee shop or a park bench all day better than he can. The problem is, that's all there is to his character. His relationship with his wife (Jane Alexander) and their grieving over their dead son is curiously only mentioned whenever it's convenient for the movie. He never comes across as an actual character in the story, he just always seems to conveniently be there for the main characters whenever they need him. As the young couple in love, Toby Hemingway and Alexa Davalos are warm in their respective roles as Oscar and Chloe, but never get to build a relationship any deeper than just physical attraction. The movie keeps on insisting that they are deeply in love with each other, but we never get a true sense of it.
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