BEFORE: Liev Schreiber carries over again from "Walking and Talking". It's only Day 3 of the romance chain, so it's just way too early to draw any conclusions about this year's chain - I'm going to be all over the place in terms of years, I've got some classic teen romances from the 1990's coming up, I've got more recent films from this century, I've got romances set in World War II and a couple other period pieces, some based on famous novels, so really, it's going to be a mixed bag. BUT the first three films are all about New Yorkers, so that's an interesting start. This one's about Jewish families from Brooklyn (?) who in the past have tended to drive upstate to the Catskills for the summer. Remember "Dirty Dancing"? Like that, only this one's specifically set in the summer of 1969, around two significant cultural events, the first moon landing (July 20, 1969) and the Woodstock concert in Bethel, NY (August 15-18, same year!)
THE PLOT: The world of a young housewife is turned upside down when she has a summer affair in the Catskills with a free-spirited blouse salesman.
AFTER: There's really a lot going on here, maybe even a bit too much - most likely the action should be viewed from the perspective of the female daughter (Pamela Gray, who would have been 13 in 1969, hmmm...) but really there are two stories, the journey/sexual awakening of the daughter over the summer, after she reaches puberty, and the parallel story of her mother, who got married young, became pregnant early on and never got to "play the field". Both women are suddenly surrounded by hippie culture and the Summer of Love, and for Pearl Kantrowitz, the mother, this leads to her having an affair with a man who sells blouses out of a bus at the Catskills resort.
Mr. Kantrowitz comes upstate on the weekends, but he's too busy in NYC during the week, working as a TV repairman, and this relates to the time period because it seems nearly everyone needs to have their TV fixed in time to watch the first moon landing. I don't know, this part seems a bit contrived, was there really an urgent wave of TV repair that month, or did the story just need a reason for the wife to be lonely? My suspicions suggest the latter. Similarly, a few weeks later, Mr. Kantrowitz can't make the journey upstate because so many hippies are on the roads, trying to get to Bethel for the big music festival, so this separates them further, gives the wife another chance to fool around with her lover, but this also feels a bit contrived. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it really went down this way for one particular couple, maybe the screenwriter is drawing from a personal experience, in which case, I stand corrected.
What really feels contrived, though, is the fact that Mr. Kantrowitz's mother claims to be a psychic, she does tarot card readings and also reads tea leaves for the other guests at the resort. But this also seems like a cheat, a quick way for someone to learn about the affair (through a vision, right...) instead of say, catching two people in the act or hearing gossip from somebody who saw the two lovers together. Then her vision causes her to call her son, strongly hinting that he should come upstate no matter what in order to save his marriage, thus forcing a confrontation between the husband and his cheating wife. It's just a bit too by-the-numbers, things fall into place just a bit too easily, if you ask me.
Young Allison, their daughter, is dating for the first time, kissing a boy for the first time, and then she figures that she'll sneak out one night to attend the big music festival - sure, she's only 14, what could possibly go wrong? All her friends want to go, and so many people are crashing the festival, who's going to notice a few more teens walking in? Yeah, that actually checks out. But the worse part of the festival for her turns out to be catching her own mother lying on a blanket with her lover, smoking pot and drinking and enjoying the forbidden psychedelic music. It's bad enough to even think about your own parents having sex, but then to catch one of them in the act of having an affair, God, that's even worse.
The parents are brought back together by an accident involving their young son, and it's clear from that point that the affair is most likely over - the blouse salesman makes Pearl an offer to drive away with her in his bus, see the whole country and leave New York behind, but it's a desperate play at best, he knows he's lost her. But then the larger question becomes, can the marriage survive - SHOULD the marriage survive, after all that's happened over the summer, and all the years of disappointment and neglect from before that? Unfortunately, it's a non-answer here, very ambiguous, and the audience is sort of left on their own to decide how things will play out. Showing the couple dancing to a Dean Martin song, then switching to Jimi Hendrix, isn't much of an answer at all. You can't have it both ways, after all.
If you're a real stickler for authenticity, which I am, then the scene here at the Woodstock Festival was inaccurate - we hear both Richie Havens performing "Freedom" (which was the first song on the first day of the festival, Friday) and the announcement from Wavy Gravy about serving "breakfast in bed for 400,000", which was made on Sunday morning - these two sound clips could not have been heard on the same day by concert-goers. NITPICK POINT, I know.
But, if it's any consolation, this is the film with THAT scene, the one with Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen doing it under a river's waterfall. And they have sex during the moon landing broadcast, too - hey, whatever does it for you, I guess.
Also starring Diane Lane (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Viggo Mortensen (last seen in "The Portrait of a Lady"), Anna Paquin (last seen in "Scream 4"), Tovah Feldshuh (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Bobby Boriello (last seen in "Enemy of the State"), Mahée Paiement, Star Jasper, Ellen David (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Lisa Bronwyn Moore (last seen in "Head in the Clouds"), Lisa Jakub (last seen in "Matinee"), Joseph Perrino, Stewart Bick, Jess Platt, Victoria Barkoff (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Tamar Kozlov, Jesse Lavendel, James Liboiron, HoJo Rose, Joel Miller, Mal Z. Lawrence, with the voices of Julie Kavner (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Neil Armstrong (last seen in "Zappa")
RATING: 5 out of 10 P.A. announcements about the ice cream man being on the premises
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