Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Love and Other Disasters Blu-ray Movie Review

Tiffany's and Other Breakfasts

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 26, 2012

The late Brittany Murphy is the ostensible face of Love and Other Disasters, an eccentric romantic comedy that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2006 and was released theatrically around the world over the next eighteen months. But the film couldn't land a U.S. distribution deal and ultimately went direct to video in June 2008. Part of the problem, I suspect, was that American marketers who were used to selling Murphy as an airhead in fluff like Just Married and Uptown Girls didn't know what to do with her as a semi-serious character living in London and trying, however unsuccessfully, to emulate Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Love and Other Disasters was the first film in twelve years from director Alek Keshishian, the music video veteran who made a celebrated debut in 1991 with the documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare, followed by a sophomore fizzle with 1994's clunker With Honors, in which Joe Pesci played a homeless man extorting food and shelter from students at Keshishian's alma mater, Harvard, in exchange for returning the only copy of Brendan Fraser's senior thesis. This time around, Keshishian didn't rely on a pop star's neuroses or the studio machine to supply his material; instead, he wrote his own script. Unfortunately, like too many film geeks, he wrote a self-reflexive navel-gazer about a frustrated screenwriter who's the gay roommate and best friend of Brittany Murphy's character. Guess who's the real center of the movie?

Keshishian got lucky, though. He cast a fine young English actor named Matthew Rhys to play Peter, the blocked screenwriter who is presumably a version of the writer-director himself. The oddball chemistry between Murphy and Rhys turned out to be the film's salvation and its most interesting element, once you decipher the story's initially muddy narrative.

Love and Other Disasters is one of those films-within-a-film where a character—here, Peter (Rhys)—ends up writing the film you're watching. Keshishian telegraphs this immediately with on-screen typing that describes in screenplay shorthand what's happening right now ("Fade In: Opening Titles and Music"). It's a device that probably should have been retired after Woody Allen used it with voiceover in Manhattan, because no one has done it better since. The opening sequence shows Emily "Jacks" Jackson (Murphy) waking up in the morning with her ex-boyfriend, James Wildstone (Eliot Cowan), with whom she's still sleeping. Keshishian extends the device by adding a credit sequence that uses character names instead of actor names (because Peter is using the people from his life, get it?), but it's a disorienting trick that doesn't work. The worst thing a filmmaker can do is confuse viewers in the early stages of a story when they're trying to get their bearings (unless you're Christopher Nolan making Memento and you really, truly know what you're doing).

In fact, things are a lot simpler than they initially appear. Jacks and Peter are best friends and long-time roommates. They'd be an ideal couple if their sexual orientations weren't incompatible, Peter being gay. Jacks's continuing affair with James after handing him his walking papers is typical of her romantic attachments. She only sleeps with men with whom there's no prospect of real involvement. As she says of James, he "fills a void". As for Peter, he lives so entirely in his head that he can imagine whole conversations and entire relationships based on a single glance, which leads to several entertaining interludes in the film.

One such sequence is an interview with a Harvey Weinstein-like movie producer, Marvin Bernstein (Michael Lerner, who, since Barton Fink, has become the go-to actor for this kind of role). In his day job as a journalist, Peter goes to meet Bernstein at his hotel, imagines the encounter while waiting, and is then told that the great man has blown him off and left town. On his way out, Peter bumps into a stranger (Adam Rayner) who could be The Love of His Life, or so Peter believes. But he's too shy to say anything. All he gets is the man's name, which he sees printed on a dropped Sotheby's catalogue: David Williams.

For much of the rest of the film, the loyal Jacks labors mightily to put Peter together with the elusive David Williams, who, inconveniently, works in New York. As a fallback, Jacks turns to a handsome Brazilian photographer's assistant, Paolo (Santiago Cabrera), who works for a monstrous egotist at British Vogue, where Jacks is an assistant to the editor. Jacks assumes that Paolo is gay, because the star photographer who employs him (Frédéric Anscombre) is known for picking up and "hiring" pretty boys on his travels. It turns out, though, that Paolo is not only straight, but also falling big time for Jacks. But every time he tries to tell her how he feels, something interrupts them. More often than not, it's James, the old boyfriend, who's still carrying a torch and keeps returning, because Jacks lets him.

Despite the shaky opening, Love and Other Disasters successfully deploys the classic elements of romantic comedy, with multiple misunderstandings, miscues and wrong turns that end up leading somewhere unexpected. Unlike so many films that start strong and fizzle, Love gains strength as its essential narrative comes into focus and as Rhys and Murphy get the chance to establish a believable and affecting relationship between Peter and Jacks. Murphy's comedic work here is the finest she'd done since Clueless, in part because the film doesn't rest entirely on her shoulders, and in part because she was freed from the two-dimensional roles with which Hollywood had saddled her and given an actual person to play. Jacks may not be the brightest person around, but she's a believable 20-something woman with the attendant uncertainties and insecurities. The best comedy comes from playing such people with utter seriousness, and it doesn't get much better than Murphy's portrayal of Jacks's complete indifference to being undressed in front of gay men, one of whom turns out not to be gay.

The proceedings are enlivened by a supporting cast of English eccentrics, including Jacks's perpetually depressed friend, an awful poet named Tallulah Riggs-Wentworth (Dr. Who's Catherine Tate), who Jacks says is trying to be the next Sylvia Plath and Peter thinks should fast-forward to the suicide part; Tallulah's perpetually cheery mother, Felicity (Stephanie Beacham); a gallery owner, Finlay McMillian (James Sives), whose connections in the art world prove useful in moving the story along; and British comedy legend Dawn French as a therapist whom Peter consults and whose entire theory of relationships is based on farts.

Love and Other Disasters Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Love and Other Disasters was shot by Pierre Morel. If the name sounds familiar, it's because Morel has since become a successful director of action pictures, notably Taken and From Paris with Love. Even before shooting this film, he'd already directed his debut feature, the stylish parkour showcase, District B13. So what's a big-time action specialist doing behind the camera on a romantic comedy? Well, Luc Besson's Europa Corp. was one of the film's financiers, and Besson is an executive producer (as is David Fincher; go figure). Morel photographed numerous films for Europa, including the first Transporter film, which presumably led to his assignment on this one.

Sourced from a digital intermediate, the 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is clean, sharp and detailed, with generally solid blacks, well-saturated colors and barely visible grain. Contrast occasionally appears to be turned up a bit high, but this seems to be deliberate, especially in scenes of high fashion. There is no overt stylization to Love and Other Disasters, just a simple, direct shooting approach that's effective when the film switches imperceptibly between fantasy and reality. The quality of detail is evident in some of the more outlandish fashions on display in the offices of British Vogue and at several of the functions the characters attend (including a gallery exhibit where one might wish for a little less detail). Since the disc has no extras, a BD-25 accommodates the 90-minute film without compression issues.

Love and Other Disasters Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 track accurately delivers a purely functional mix composed of dialogue, a breezily continental underscore by Europa Corp. regular Alexandre Azaria and occasional atmospherics in environments such as the art exhibit of animal carcasses that probably seemed a lot funnier when it was first conceived. Dialogue is clear, although the lack of subtitles may frustrate viewers not comfortable with English accents when speakers pick up the pace.

Love and Other Disasters Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The disc is so barebones that it doesn't even contain subtitles, let alone extras. Reliable sources report that Image's 2008 DVD contained a featurette, the film's trailer and bonus trailers, but they're nowhere in sight here.

Love and Other Disasters Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Love and Other Disasters is a trifle, and a flawed trifle at that. Then again, so few contemporary romantic comedies have anything to recommend them that I'm delighted to find even a modestly effective one. Brittany Murphy was a special talent who was lost far too soon. For me, any good performance she gave is worth seeing. Recommended, with all due disclaimers.