Last night Susan recommended that we watch “She Came to Me,” an indie film with an all star cast including Marisa Tomei, Peter Dinklage, and Anne Hathaway. With no familiarity or expectations, we were pleasantly surprised by the quirky film, a sort of movified comic opera. Despite abundant critical piling on, I found much to enjoy in this “sort of wan, unfunny cousin to an erstwhile Woody Allen comedy”.
It’s a curiosity, to be sure, a creative one-off with a bit of an identity crisis. But the film’s operatic playfulness complete with unrealistic, overblown character arcs and oversaturated vignettes entertained us and kept us guessing.
This morning, I find myself — after slogging through a parade of unflattering movie reviews — wondering if my attraction to a film that apparently many others disliked might not actually be related to my Rosslyn romance. I’m going to try and poke at that a little bit, but first I’ll back up and get you up to speed on the film.
A comedy about love in all its forms set in the bustling metropolis of New York City, She Came to Me follows Steven Lauddem (Dinklage), a composer who is plagued by a creative block which leaves him unable to finish the score for his big comeback opera. When his former therapist-turned-wife Patricia (Hathaway) suggests he rekindle his creativity by getting lost in the city, Steven sets out in search of inspiration. His epiphany comes after he meets a spirited woman named Katrina (Tomei) and discovers his life has much more potential than he bargained for, or ever could have imagined.
(Source: She Came to Me | Official Website)
Pretty peculiar but intriguing seed! This madcap movie mashes up some unlikely bedfellows, starting with opera and tugboats. If histrionic mixology isn’t your thing ing, best skip on.
This next summary sets up the opera composer plus tugboat captain dynamic a little better.
She Came to Me is set in the completely different worlds of New York opera and tugboats. It follows composer Steven Lauddem (Dinklage), who has massive writer’s block and is unable to finish the score for his big comeback opera, according to its description. When his wife, Patricia (Hathaway), formerly his therapist, encourages him to go for a walk and talk to a stranger in search of inspiration, he meets Katrina (Tomei), a tugboat captain, who is “addicted to romance.”
(Source:The Hollywood Reporter)
Patricia advises Steven to go for a walk and allow himself to get lost — meander and wrap the unknown, the serendipitous, the real around himself — as a way to get unstuck. Great advice, thanks!
And he does.
I’ve said that the critics largely panned the film, but that’s actually too broad a generalization. Here are a couple of the positive takeaways that ring true for me.
Just don’t expect it to be predictable. Some people may be uncomfortable because it does not fit into any established tone or direction. But for many, that will be a bonus… Miller again gives us some characters who are pretentious about art, needy, drawn by the idea of love, but not very good about thinking through the realities of a day-to-day relationship. The characters try to control the world around them, and sometimes, the people around them are destined to fail. Tellingly, the film opens with the famous aria from Carmen that translates to “Love is a rebellious bird.”
[…]
Patricia (Anne Hathaway), a therapist whose favorite activity is intensive house cleaning and who likes to imagine, in sessions with patients, scrubbing out the mistaken thinking from their brains… seems endlessly patient but more therapeutic than affectionate…
Patricia, losing her patience with Steven, urges him to take their dog for a walk to clear his head and find inspiration. At a dive bar, he meets Katrina (Marisa Tomei), a tugboat captain… [who] takes him to see her boat and confides that she has a problem with romantic obsession. Somehow, this does not dissuade him from having sex with her, and somehow, that inspires him to create an opera about a homicidal tugboat captain. And somehow, the opera is a triumph.
— Nell Minnow (Source: RogerEbert.com)
So much good in there! Let’s start with Carmen.
Habanera is a bold and beautiful statement from the title character of Bizet’s Carmen. She opens with “Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame.” Translations vary describing the bird, but one thing is consistent, no one can tame it.
(Source: ArtsEmerson)
Amen! This assertion, that love is an untamable and rebellious force, resonates as I seek to unbraid my Rosslyn romance.
A marriage to the therapist who helped him recover from a nervous breakdown after his first operatic, success, fits in with our perennial inclination to resolve and control the stabilizing elements of life. But, alas, such a marriage is inevitably therapeutic and affectionless, ergo the sequence of unpredictable, unlikely “howevers”… Improbable? You bet. But in the parallel universe of opera, verisimilitude need to apply.
Here’s another opera tie-in.
It’s when we see the opera, which is luscious and commanding, that the design of “She Came to Me” fully kicks in. It’s going to be a passionate light-comic fable about the humanity of our pathologies, and about how maybe we can save ourselves from them by outing them.
[…]
“She Came to Me,” in its ensemble way,… has more of the yearning flavor, the blend of of sadness and hope… It’s a movie that embraces coincidence with a karmic lyrical enchantment…
— Owen Gleiberman (Source: Variety)
“Karmic lyrical enchantment”. I’m not even certain what that means! But I like it. And that yearning — sometimes cringy, sometimes heart wrenching — ache, no matter how hyperbolic and twisted rings familiar and true. Pathological passion, so personal and convoluted, so peculiar and even perverse, is untamable, try as we might. Love, romance, and passion are rebellious, not right or wrong.
And, patient reader, if per chance, you are still with me, please accept my apologies for this patchwork quilt of a post. Thinking on my feet, and not very well at that. Trying to articulate connections that I’m seeing, but that remain mostly elusive. if you can bear with me just a moment longer, I have one more scrap to toss into this scrapbook page.
You’re this neighborhood’s broken daughter
With all the blessings that it grants
I’ll tell you ’bout this dream I had
If you tell me of your plansYou got me addicted to romance
[…]
My muse, the music you whispered in my ear
Reminds me of who I am…[…]
And if this isn’t love, my dear
It’s more than what we planned
It’s more than just chanceYou’ve got me addicted to romance
— Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa, “Addicted to Romance” (Source: LyricFind)
Excerpted from the “She Came to Me” soundtrack, these words sung by Bruce Springsteen hit home in a remarkably Rosslyn-centric way. All of them.
Here’s the full song.
There’s no question that at the time of our 2006 purchase of this property, Rosslyn was the “neighborhood’s broken daughter”. Virtually everyone that we spoke to balked at our foolhardy purchase. Money pit. Tear down. Marriage tester…
But she seduced us. She seduced me. We gambled our dreams and her history. We exchanged plans and dreams. It was so much more than what we anticipated, but we regained ourselves in the process. And I accepted her as my muse, though I didn’t understand that at the time.
Now, almost 18 years later, I’m trying to understand and honor the love. I’m trying to manage the addiction and begin untangling the romance. From day-to-day, week to week, my mileage varies. And yet, not unlike the movie, I’ve come to understand that outing our complicated relationship, *my* complicated relationship, with Rosslyn may be the closest I come to catharsis and resolution. Maybe…
What do you think?