Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (R) (108 min.) - The title says it all about Wilbur (Jamie Sives), whose suicidal tendencies don't make him any less attractive to women. One mildly smitten female is Alice (Shirley Henderson), who happens to be married to Wilbur's brother, Harbour (Adrian Rawlins), who has been cleaning up after Wilbur since their mother died.
That brief outline of Lone Scherfig's film doesn't spoil anything. Scherfig has plenty up her sleeve beyond that. Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself isn't in the same giddy league with Harold and Maude but shares some sensibilities with that cult classic.
Why Wilbur wants to snuff it, and why we should hope he won't, becomes clear under Scherfig's patient, guiding hand. For all of his flinty behavior in group therapy sessions and family outings, Wilbur is a man of great emotional potential. Alice recognizes it, but her own problems take precedence. Harbour has known it all along and dutifully caters to his brother's depression. People at various points - a nurse (Lisa McKinlay), a doctor (Mads Mikkelsen) and Alice's lonely friend (Julia Davis) - are shown to be sadder than Wilbur, yet they don't contemplate suicide.
Even so, no one should think that Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself is downbeat. This is a surprisingly uplifting film, full of colorful characters and offhand gallows humor that seems like a defense mechanism against the movie this could have become. (For the opposite effect, see the Broken Wings review below.) Like last year's Oscar-winning The Barbarian Invasions, the impending end of someone's life becomes a fresh start for others, and not in melodramatic fashion.
The performances are all on the mark, and the gray Scottish backdrop adequately dulls the inherent sunniness of the screenplay. Scherfig's film goes a bit soft near its conclusion, but that's a minor quibble. By that time, Wilbur, Alice and Harbour have become a fascinating love triangle, one not born of sex but necessity. That in itself makes Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself a film worth paying attention to. Grade: B-plus
- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
Plenty of sex, but not much else
Young Adam (NC-17) (98 min.) - Two Scottish bargemen fish a corpse from a river in the opening minutes of David Mackenzie's film. It's obvious that the younger boatman, Joe (Ewan McGregor) feels something like compassion for the victim. But why? As time progresses and, in some cases, flashes backward, it's clear that Joe isn't a compassionate sort. He's promiscuous, seeking nothing from his conquests other than carnal satisfaction. That compulsion is the source of Young Adam's NC-17 rating, essentially a death sentence at the box office. And, like this year's earlier NC-17 offering, The Dreamers, it's debatable that such graphic sexuality and frontal nudity is even necessary to the plot's central theme. Joe does know more about that drowning victim than he'll admit. His guilty feelings while watching another man on trial for her murder is the essence of Mackenzie's movie. Joe's relationship with the dead woman, or any other sex partners, can haunt him without so much sexual detail.
But it's probably there for two reasons: Novelist Alexander Trocchi included those details in the book Mackenzie adapted, and the filmmaker realized that such internalized drama with long, wordless passages needed something to keep audiences interested. If not for the sexy stuff, Young Adam wouldn't keep viewers around until its payoff.
McGregor, an actor who isn't often caught doing the same sorts of roles, proves his range. Joe is closer to his sexual vagabond in The Pillow Book than anything else. Some elements of Young Adam - the title may have something to do with a boat named Atlantic Eve - are reminiscent of Crime and Punishment and An American Tragedy (later filmed as A Place in the Sun). But those elements don't come into play until later, after Joe has been overestablished as irresistible to women.
Ella (Tilda Swinton), the wife of his barge partner Les (Peter Mullan), can't resist his laconic charm. Neither can her recently widowed sister (Therese Bradley) or Cathie (Emily Mortimer), a woman he picked up on a beach. Each of those encounters means more trouble for Joe, yet McGregor is so reserved that we never sense his awareness or naivete about those risks. The result is a movie as gloomy as its Scottish settings, understated to the brink of boredom and endured only to see how far Mackenzie can push his actors sexually. I'm certain that isn't what creators of the NC-17 rating had in mind. Grade: C
- S.P.
Seeking a new comfort zone
Divan (NR) (77 min.) - A couch is a couch is a couch. Unless, of course, it's the fabled piece of furniture on which a renowned Hasidic rebbe once spent the night, in Hungary in the late 1800s. That's the nominal subject of Divan, a moving low budget documentary from New York filmmaker Pearl Gluck.
That legendary heirloom, the object of Gluck's great affection, might be thought of as this film's McGuffin. Gluck and a series of friends, acquaintances and other commentators in reality are on a quest to come to terms with their shared religious heritage: What meaning, if any, do the rules and rituals of their Orthodox Jewish upbringing, in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, have for their adult lives? How should they see the world, if not through the lens of that particular belief system?
Gluck, warm, funny and self-deprecating, allows her curiosity to be her guide on a trip to Hungary, where she negotiates with distant relatives for the divan. In Divan's most affecting sequence, at a grave site, viewers are given a fresh reminder of the extent to which Hitler obliterated Jews in Eastern Europe. Gluck returns, if not to her former faith, back into the good graces of her father, who, for the first time, crosses the bridge to Manhattan and spends time in his daughter's apartment. Grade: B
- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent
Overall, a lost cause
Saved! (PG-13) (92 min.) - Religious hypocrisy is a too-easy target for director/co-writer Brian Dannelly, whose first feature film can occasionally be forgiven for stacking the deck higher than fine satire permits. The purpose of such comedy is making viewers reconsider ideals they supported before. Saved! winds up preaching to the heathens, focusing on the worst aspects of Christian thinking and assuming there's no middle ground between salvation and being saved from it.
The first half-hour of Saved! is smartly concocted, establishing American Eagle Christian High School as a hotbed of prayer. Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore) is the sanctimonious student leading a God-rock band and harping on classmates to walk the straight and narrow. Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan) runs the school using unctuous hip-speak reaching out to the students: "Let's get our Christ on! Let's kick it Jesus-style!"
That's amusing enough. But in order to create conflict, Dannelly and co-writer Michael Urban lose whatever subtlety was needed to make the film work. Mary (Jena Malone) isn't a virgin anymore after convincing herself that Jesus wants her to have sex with her boyfriend (Chad Faust) to end his homosexual curiosity. She finds tarnished soul mates in Faye's wheelchair-bound brother Roland (Macaulay Culkin) and rebellious Cassandra (Eva Amurri), the most sensible student enrolled at American Eagle, who also happens to be Jewish.
From there, Saved! doesn't have many places to go where Monty Python or Kevin Smith haven't gone before. The question of whether Mary can keep her pregnancy secret isn't compelling, and a romance between Mary's mother (Mary-Louise Parker) and pastor Skip is too hesitant to matter. Moore's sunny appeal contrasts nicely with Faye's darkness in the name of the Lord until she, like so many devout Christians in movies, goes crazy. The movie even climaxes at a prom when each major character has one more chance to play their one-note roles.
The only aspect of Saved! that consistently threatens to make the movie special is Amurri, undeniably the daughter of Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, with the same saucer eyes and saucy confidence. Cassandra wouldn't last long at a Christian school - blasphemy is her specialty - but that's one stretch of logic to be thankful for. The other actors raise their game when sharing a scene with Amurri. She almost does that for the whole movie. Grade: C
