Eat, Pray, Love opened at area theaters this week, and it promises to be a monster of a hit. Based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir about a post-divorce year of world travel—Italy, India, and Bali are on her itinerary—the film features the eminently likable Julia Roberts as Gilbert’s stand-in, and a series of beautiful location shots as a stand-in for most everything else.
Gilbert is a successful writer whose relationships have proved to be less of a success. A half dozen years ago, newly single and unsure about her future, she took her book advance and set sail, rediscovering the three essentials of her title.
In Italy, she awoke to the primal pleasures of that country’s cuisine; in India, she meditated on Sanskrit verses; in Bali, she meets the man she might just take home to New Jersey. It’s a whirlwind trip, and save for the messy divorce and hints of existential dread, a damn fine year-long vacation. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, in fact, to find travel agencies offering an Eat, Pray, Love tour for the well-fed but spiritually malnourished American upper classes.
It’s hard to take all this very seriously when Gilbert includes passages like this, about her lust for her young language tutor Giovanni and his twin brother: “Meeting the boys in person, I began to wonder if perhaps I should adjust my rule somewhat about remaining celibate this year. For instance, perhaps I could remain totally celibate except for keeping a pair of handsome 25-year-old Italian twin brothers as lovers. Which was slightly reminiscent of a friend of mine who is vegetarian except for bacon, but nonetheless… I was already composing my letter to Penthouse.”
But no, she says, and banishes the fantasy. At home, she collapses to the floor and “offer[s] up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks. First in English. Then in Italian. And then—just to get the point across—in Sanskrit.”
Moments like that betray Gilbert’s enterprise, peeling away the veneer of depth to reveal a shallow self-involvement reminiscent of another recent summer movie: Sex and the City. Both films revolve around a privileged, searching female writer whose self-absorption is put forth disingenuously as introspection. Both seem to equate spending with mending, and both seek resolution with a Mr. Right (or, to SATC fans, Mr. Big). In this context, Gilbert’s Indian ashram isn’t much different than Carrie Bradshaw’s designer shoe stores—but at least SATC wore its consumerism with the label showing.
Also this week: Life During Wartime is out now at Northampton’s Pleasant Street Theater. A sort of sequel from independent director Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Storytelling), the film revisits his 1998 art-house breakthrough Happiness. The trick is that this time around, the characters from that film are played by an entirely new cast including Shirley Henderson, Charlotte Rampling, Paul Reubens and Ally Sheedy. It’s familiar ground for the director, who also explored multiple-actor characters in Palindromes, where eight different actors and actresses tackled a single role.
Last but not least, two special screenings come to the area this week: the Hitchcock classic Psycho screens at Amherst Cinema on Sunday and Wednesday. General manager Jake Meginsky notes that the summer Hitchcock film series has been almost too successful: the theater recently had to turn away a hundred people who came for a sell-out show of To Catch a Thief. To help everyone find a seat, Amherst has added an extra Wednesday evening show of Psycho. And in Hadley, Cinemark hosts an Aug. 19 screening of anti-pot propaganda reel Reefer Madness, complete with live commentary from a trio of Mystery Science Theater 3,000 alums.”
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
