JohnSD

A beautiful movie ruined by a bad script. Sadly, the story was all head and no heart. Did Joan really love Joe or did she use him as her nom de plume so she could get her stories published? All the passion was for writing and not for the humans involved. This is a bitter, brittle feminist story about a privileged "victim" wife caught in her "art" more than her husband and children. The males are weak, throw-away characters and only the long-suffering, and creatively-genius wife are of any depth and she is so passively-aggressively contained that only glimpses of her humanity escape the black hole of her rage and self-contempt. As a male, I found this movie very difficult and insulting to watch. Glen Close does an excellent job, but we've seen her "boil the bunny" before.

While I enjoyed the fist two movies, I found the adolescent and self centered bickering boring and silly as the characters enter middle age. Good health, lovely children, dream jobs, and no financial worries and they are sill filled with selfish angst about not getting something more! It was set in Greece, but you only get claustrophobic glimpses of the island and the long hotel scene could have been filmed in a Best Western motel anywhere in the world. Even the Celine character complains of it's blandness. Maybe this is an accurate image of our present culture, shellfish and narcissistic, but I hope it is only a phase because it is vapid and immature.