Wicker Park

Directed by: Paul McGuigan
 

Good films are those that leave you asking for more when they end. That is a given and proven theory. Hence, the corollary of it would be: a bad film is one that finds you wanting it to end much sooner than the film gets to it. This corollary is true of Wicker Park. It starts off in an interesting fashion, though a little too silent, at a risk of losing its audience's interest. For a film that seems like it will get ahead of itself, Wicker Park is a huge let down. With every passing plot point, which start coming in too late into the film (after 50 minutes or so), the film gets dumb and dumber. So around the 75^th minute you're thinking, 'oh come on, just do it now' and the film is saying, 'hang on, bear with me, I promise I will get better' – only, it doesn't. Wicker Park is a credited remake of a 1996 French film called L' Appartement, which I haven't seen. So no comparisons here.

 

That said; there are some aspects of the film which I did like while trying to enjoy the movie experience. First and foremost being Diane Kruger for a reason best known as 'Ohh, so beautiful!', but even that couldn't keep my attention through the film. As far as performances go, Hartnett plays a guy he plays in most films, from 40 days and 40 nights to Pearl Harbour, a likeable, somewhat fuzzy headed, restrained everyday guy. While that stereotype pays off in this film, it makes his character seem like lacking in depth at the point where he comes to what should have been the big showdown scene of the film and ends up being midway being a whimper and a soft-hearted tear. This scene leaves you feeling that someone had decided not to make the film. But for a good part of the narrative, Hartnett gets you to empathize with his character, given a ridiculously flimsy plot and contrived coincidences on which it hinges.

Matthew Lillard plays Luke – a wannabe cool dude stereotype who is Hartnett's closest pal and is quite enjoyable in his scenes. In the same 'crucial' scene of the film that I mentioned earlier, I empathized the most with his character, though we stood at opposite ends of the knowledge continuum; he knew nothing, I knew everything – and I felt for him.

The editing style was a visually pleasing effort – though the editing itself cannot be appreciated much, except that the one saving grace of the film is the non-linear narrative which might have impressed some of the audiences for whom the structure may have delivered the 'wow' effect. But what I enjoyed about the editing was the style in which the swift split screens are brought in, mostly at the right moments, how the parallel visual split also brings in multiple time lines into the same screen. Nicely done!

Let me tell you as briefly as I can, without letting much out about the story / plot – we open the film with Josh Hartnett, a photographer, engaged to a girl whose brother's ad agency needs him to leave for China on an assignment that very night. In the first chance encounter at an up-market restaurant, Hartnett seems to have run into an ex-girlfriend of 2 years who, we find out later, had left him high and dry with no note or anything, after which he moved to a different city, found a girl and came back to the city which he left, to have found her today (or is he hallucinating?) when he is supposed to be flying out of the country. One writer's fancy follows another and after a long/ silent wait, we nosedive into a series of coincidences which get more and more ridiculous as they are thrown at us. Oh, did I mention multiple time-lines? The movie flits back and forth between the backward narrative of how Hartnett and Kruger got together and their backstory to the forward narrative in which he follows a series of clues in trying to find her again, which also leads to the only scene in the film which I found thoroughly interesting, which is also the introduction scene of a pivotal character.

On second thoughts, something in L' Appartement must have inspired the team to make this Hollywood no-brainer flick. I am intrigued now… if anyone does happen to catch the original, do write in to let me know what you thought of it.

 

The author, an aspiring film maker also blogs at http://www.kartickslongroad.blogspot.com/