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By Cole Smithey

‘Definitely, Maybe’

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For a romantic comedy “Definitely, Maybe” hits all the right notes of commitment, honesty and maturity that go into a young father’s explanation to his daughter about the women he dated before she was conceived. Ryan Reynolds plays Gen X politico upstart turned advertising executive Will Hayes whose bumbling ’90s era dating life forms the story’s backbone. Hayes’s precocious daughter Maya is perfectly played by Abigail Breslin, but it’s Isla Fisher who keeps the romantic tension bubbling.

Hayes is in the midst of a divorce with Emily (Elizabeth Banks) just as their curious 10-year-old daughter is grasping to understand adult relationships. Sex education classes at Maya’s Manhattan school have her asking questions that burn her dad’s ears. It’s in this pressurized atmosphere that Maya commands her dad to spill the beans on his sordid past for an epic bedtime story. He concedes, but changes the names to throw Maya off the scent of which liaison became her mom. It’s a wobbly narrative device at best, but good enough to validate the film’s flashback-forward-motion.

At college in 1992 Hayes preens in a mirror where he fancies himself worthy of presidential status. The brief bit speaks volumes about how he sees himself. He’s off to New York City for a two-month stint working for Bill Clinton’s campaign, and leaves behind his girlfriend Emily, that his gnarly roommate has threatened to bed while he’s away. New York’s intoxicating effect eclipses Hayes’s toilet paper gathering job at the Clinton headquarters where he meets April (Fisher), a determinedly apolitical spirit destined to become his platonic soul mate, if not actual love interest.       
 
Writer/director Adam Brooks (“Wimbledon”) baits the story with a diary sent from Emily, that Hayes is dispatched to deliver to Emily’s ex-girlfriend Summer (Rachel Weisz), now residing in Manhattan as an ambitious journalism student. Naturally, Hayes can’t resist reading the journal, which is filled with reflections on Emily’s and Summer’s lesbian encounters. All the better to fire Hayes’s subconscious when he goes to deliver the manuscript only to discover Summer’s older college professor/political analyst/lover (Kevin Kline) holding court in her apartment with a cocktail in hand. Kline’s uncredited role adds several layers of meaning that resonate across the arc of the story.

So it’s in this heady sexually and politically charged landscape that Hayes and Summer strike up a picture-perfect romance that allows the movie to momentarily open up as a full on romance picture before sliding down a series of trap doors that coincide with Clinton’s fall from grace.

The significant thing about the characters is that we recognize and empathize with them in a transparent way because the director drops so many great clues-there’s a certain lost book of April’s that strikes a dominant chord. These are people who desire love with a passion that makes them attractive, not just as pretty people-which all of these actors clearly are-but as versions of folks we know or have known. The ever-capable Weisz seems pleased to play a departure from her trademark dramatic fare and Summer introduces Hayes to an ethical question in a way that shows fiber beneath the fur. However, it’s Fisher who rightfully connects the film’s shifting tone with a comic timing that pulses. The camera loves Fisher and her romantic sensibilities are spot-on for their combination of shyness and eagerness. For her part, Breslin is effortless and a welcome replacement to the Dakota Fanning era.   

“Definitely, Maybe” is a multi-layered romantic movie that builds from four crosscurrent female directions. Emily, Summer, April, and Maya are forces of nature that bewitch a guy with the world on a string, except that he doesn’t know what he has, much less what to do with it. Hayes needs the help that he gets from Maya to prioritize his romantic focus, and it says a lot about her character that she is so able to do so. And yes, your girlfriend, wife, lover, mother or friend will cry more than once. CV

‘In Bruges’

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“In Bruges” (pronounced brooj) is a highly unique and stylized black comedy that makes good on its ostensibly simple hitmen/boss narrative trope. Colin Farrell has visible fun as Ray, a newbie assignment killer sent to Bruges, Belgium, with his more experienced Irish compatriot, Ken (Brenden Gleeson), to hide out after a London kill that went astray. A Laurel and Hardy friendship develops between the two men as they sightsee Belgium’s best preserved medieval city while awaiting instructions from their excitable and profane boss Harry (exceptionally played by Ralph Fiennes). The film shifts into a postmodern existential satire even as the body count goes up in a surprise-filled climax. Here is an unapologetically irreverent European flick that makes subtle character development as effortless as Ferrell’s upward bent eyebrows.

“You’ve got to stick to your principles” is the theme that our characters wrestle with individually as their similar, but different, purposes are revealed for coming to the picturesque town with its romantic canals, bridges and cobblestone streets. Harry visited Bruges with his parents as a boy and looks back nostalgically on the ancient city as a magical kind of fantasy land. There’s a streak of poetry in Harry’s psychology that allows him to send his bumbling killers to hide out in a place he genuinely loves. We can interpret Harry’s subconscious longing for an excuse to revisit Bruges. The foreshadowing is icily transparent and allows for a loaded periodic climax of noir, comic and dramatic elements that dip into Grand Guignol visuals.   

Ray and Ken are two fish out of water and as such attract odd pals that include drug dealers, prostitutes and a racist American dwarf film actor Jimmy (Jordan Prentice). There’s some borrowing from last year’s black comedy hit “Death at a Funeral” in transferring a dwarf character to carry significant plot points, but when Jimmy goes off on a cocaine rant about an imminent race war, the character metaphorically sticks out his tongue and bites it clean off.

Ray repeatedly complains that Bruges is a “shithole,” while happy-go-lucky Ken clearly enjoys the place’s innate charm. But Ray’s generally put off demeanor conceals a terrible heartbreak over a lethal mistake he made in London. Nonetheless, Ray’s spirits rise when he meets a local hottie named Chloe (Clemence Poesy), a criminal in her own right, with a boyfriend (Jeremie Renier) who loads his gun with blanks.

Writer/director Martin McDonagh (“Six Shooter”) follows the form of classic ’60s era European cinema in giving the first act a leisurely pace in which nothing much seems to happen while layers of behavior are adding up. There’s no mistaking the township of the title as an enormous secondary character stealing for menace. The film’s gradually escalating tonal steps from innocence to violence begin with an unintended verbal insult from Ray toward a family of fat Americans that want to climb the narrow stairs of a bell tower. The weight challenged patriarch ineffectually chases Ray around the Town Square in a desperate attempt at pummeling the cheeky Irishman. Ray’s anti-American disposition gets more unflattering when he punches out an offended couple in a restaurant. The edgy humor has a ring of realism that extends the language of the text. Everything is understated and everything is overstated, at the same time.  

“In Bruges” is a movie that makes you thirsty for the golden Belgian beer that its characters savor at every opportunity. It made me want to travel to Bruges to spend a few days drinking, but the film’s rapid submersion into the inky waters of pitch black comedy is its real reward. Black comedy is a rich genre when done well because it forces the audience to look at humor, culture and death under an abstract microscope. I just love a good abstract laugh. CV

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