Art Cine Productions,
Christian Camargo, Katie Holmes, William Hurt, Allison Janney, Cherry Jones, Russell Means, Michael Nyqvist, Jean Reno, Juliet Rylance, Mark Rylance, Ben Whishaw
The family gets together to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend at the summer house alongside a lake in rural New England. The period is in the mid 80’s. The family tries to get along, but there are many issues and many problems, and the weekend is a bit of an eye opener and game changer for the family as the fight and bicker their way through the long, long weekend.
This is a Russian story inspired by Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull”, moved to the U.S. It was terribly difficult for me to sit through. Generally I love “people” films and “relationship” films much more than most guys. But I simply despise films that have no purpose and no point. Just setup a camera, film a day or two in a family’s life where nothing much happens (to be fair their is a tragedy in the last few minutes of the story, but by that time nobody really cares). It just goes on and on and on with unlikable characters, no plot or purpose, no direction, it just happens. When I saw it produced by a company called “Art Cine” I knew what I would get. This film is trying so very, very hard to appeal to stuck up artsy folks, and as a result, leaves the rest of us far behind. I really tried hard to give this movie a chance. It has a really good cast, but with nothing for them to do. I’m not sure what made these folks accept this film, but I’ll bet there is a story behind it. I just can’t think anyone read it and said, “This will be a fascinating story”. I was NOT in a bad mood when I watched, neither was I tired or distracted. I went into hoping for the best and a bored nearly to tears throughout. In the end, there wasn’t anything worth recommending. I am not sure with the original story, but people rave about it. Maybe the transfer to America during the Reagan days, just did not work. Avoid it, unless you really like art house movies for some reason.
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