She's So Lovely Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

She's So Lovely Blu-ray Movie Review

Anything Goes

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 22, 2013

"Love is so . . . difficult."

She's So Lovely was originally titled "She's De-Lovely", which comes from a line spoken near the end of the film, but the title was altered at the request of songwriter Cole Porter's estate. The change hardly makes a difference, because no title could capture the uniquely crazed spirit of the last original feature film scripted by the pioneer of independent cinema, John Cassavetes, who died in 1989 before he could direct it himself. In 1996, when Cassavetes' son, Nick, was completing his first film as a director, Unhook the Stars (starring his mother, Gena Rowlands), the younger Cassavetes convinced a group of producers led by the Weinstein Brothers to fund production, and he cast his father's original choice, Sean Penn, in the lead. Rowlands advised her son against working on material so close to home, but he couldn't be talked out of it. Rowlands ultimately took a small role in the film.

As Nick Cassavetes emphasizes in the interview included on this Blu-ray, She's So Lovely isn't "a John Cassavetes film", because only his father made those. Still, it's impossible to miss the emotional rawness and revolutionary spirit that infuses the elder Cassavetes' work and continues to inspire later filmmakers. Whatever the subject, John Cassavetes was relentless in his search for emotional honesty. He cared more about exploring messy, flawed, often illogical lives than about rounding off neatly structured tales with clearly drawn morality. Viewers who have trouble accepting irrational behavior from movie characters—e.g., those who walk out of the films of someone like Derek Cianfrance (The Place Beyond the Pines or Blue Valentine) pronouncing judgment on the "stupidity" of the characters—might as well stop here. A writer-director like Cianfrance is a clear successor to Cassavetes, and even he doesn't go as far out on a limb as Cassavetes did when he wrote She's So Lovely.

At its core, She's So Lovely is about the irrationality of love, but not in the comically operatic style of Moonstruck. By turns heartbreaking, amusing, disturbing, infuriating and depressing, the film repeatedly shifts registers, so that you're never sure where it's taking you. That, too, was a John Cassavetes trademark. Life didn't fit into a single genre, and neither did his films.

She's So Lovely didn't do particularly well in America, but at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, Sean Penn was awarded Best Actor, and cinematographer Thierry Arbogast received the Technical Grand Prize for both She's So Lovely and The Fifth Element (which, when you think about it, has its own variety of anarchic spirit and is also, at its core, about love).

The "she" of the title is Maureen Murphy Quinn (Robin Wright), beautiful but troubled and an alcoholic, who lives in a flophouse with her husband, Eddie Quinn (Penn), a small-time grifter who also has a drinking problem and isn't all that stable when he's sober. (The now-divorced Wright and Penn had been living together for six years when they made the film and married shortly before its release.) Though he loves Maureen, Eddie disappears for days at a time without a word. Maureen finds this hard enough under normal circumstances, but it's especially bad right now, because she's just learned that she's pregnant.

Their neighbor, Kiefer (a pre-Sopranos James Gandolfini), is only too happy to take advantage of Eddie's absence, and he accosts Maureen in the hallways and at the neighborhood bar, where he plies her with drinks while she inquires about Eddie with his best friend, Shorty (Harry Dean Stanton), and his girlfriend, Georgie (Debi Mazar). When they return to their rooms, naturally Kiefer has further plans. In the ensuing struggle, Maureen hits him with a bottle and Kiefer knocks her cold. When Maureen awakens in the morning, she has a black eye and a bruised face.

Terrified that Eddie will return, see her condition and respond by killing Kiefer, Maureen seeks aid from a psychiatric rapid response unit, where the efficient counselor (Chloe Webb) is all too familiar with Eddie. Maureen is as inarticulate with the counselor as she is with everyone else, and she almost immediately regrets making any report. When she finally struggles home, distraught and soaked from the rain, she find Eddie in the bar with Shorty and Georgie, carousing and ordering drinks. Eddie immediately knows that something is wrong, but he insists that they go out for a night on the town, including dancing and dinner with two friends who own a restaurant (cameo appearances by Burt Young and an uncredited Talia Shire).

When they return to their room, they encounter Kiefer in the hall, and violence ensues. The next morning, Eddie loads his gun, and Maureen panics. She calls "mobile response", and as Eddie sits in the bar with Shorty becoming increasingly agitated, two attendants arrive. Eddie goes berserk. The slow-motion shot of him bursting through the bar's plate glass window into the street was heavily featured in the film's trailer, and it's equally beautiful and chaotic at the same time. (By all appearances, no stunt man was used.) Dripping blood, Eddie runs through the streets, but he is eventually apprehended and committed for treatment.

Time passes. I don't want to reveal anything by saying how much, but it's enough for Maureen to give birth. After an evaluation by a case worker (Rowlands), Eddie is released and immediately goes to get a haircut and facial so that he no longer looks like an inmate. The hairdresser, Saul (David Thornton), gets carried away and dies his hair blond, so that when he first emerges, he looks for all the world like an older version of Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (I am convinced this was a deliberate visual joke.) Eddie's old pal Georgie recuts his hair and repairs the damage.

But things are different now. Maureen has a new man in her life. His name is Joey Germoni (John Travolta—yes, John Travolta), and he's a successful contractor with plenty of money and a great house. By all appearances, Maureen has made a better life for herself. So why is she so frazzled at the prospect of Eddie's release?

I've left out several key pieces of information, and it's impossible to discuss the latter half of She's So Lovely without revealing them. Suffice it to say that the film portrays two people whose connection exists at the cellular level, for reasons that neither of them can explain but that both of them recognize in themselves and each other. It isn't rational, it isn't practical, and it isn't good for them or other people, but it's real and it has to be dealt with. How Maureen and Eddie deal with their intense connection drives the story. Cassavetes (both father and, at least here, son) never cared about pleasing an audience; he wanted to challenge viewers with something difficult, and his approach provoked anger and frustration as often as admiration. Not everyone finds it enlightening to experience the struggles of two inarticulate alcoholics to express their love for each other, and maybe (or maybe not) achieve sufficient self-awareness to sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of each other's well-being. To those who do, Cassavetes Jr. and Sr. offer a disturbing, sometimes touching, often funny, thought-provoking film.

She's So Lovely Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Thierry Arbogast's award-winning cinematography is better served by Echo Bridge's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray than I expected, given Echo Bridge's track record. The image is reasonably detailed, the blacks have integrity, and colors maintain the original dreary palette until we get to Joey's house, where hues brighten somewhat (but not overly so). One sign that this is a film by Nick rather than John Cassavetes is that the director let Arbogast smooth over some of the grit in the down 'n' dirty world inhabited by Eddie and Maureen. They aren't lit like movie stars, but they also don't look like Skid Row bums. (Now, Harry Dean Stanton's Shorty is another matter.)

Some amount of high frequency roll-off appears to have been performed, smoothing over the film's natural grain pattern and blurring the fine detail in minute patterns and tiny lettering, and a light amount of artificial sharpening seems to have been applied, though not so much as to cause obvious edge haloes. The combination, however, tips the balance more toward video than film. It's not a disaster, but it suggests a transfer made for HD broadcast and repurposed for Blu-ray.

She's So Lovely Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original 5.1 soundtrack is reproduced in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, but the track isn't a surround showcase. Ambiant noises such as rainfall, the murmur of bar patrons or music on a dance floor (with Tito Larriva playing the band leader) provide a general sense of immersion, but otherwise the emphasis is on dialogue and the eclectic soundtrack. The original underscoring sometimes sounds like something Angelo Badalamenti might have written for David Lynch, but it's by Joseph Vitarelli, who has mostly worked in TV but also scored two of my favorite "small" films, The Last Seduction and How I Got into College. Cassavetes uses a number of oddly appropriate tunes to complement the story's shifting moods, including Björk's "It's Oh So Quiet", which plays over the opening credits, and David Baerwald's "The Toughest Whore in Babylon", which plays over the closing shots and credit scroll. All of the music sounds ideal for the film.

She's So Lovely Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

I don't have the 2000 Miramax/Disney DVD of She's So Lovely, but it lists two supplements. One of them, "John Cassavetes: A Discussion", is included on this Blu-ray, but the other, "An Actor's Look at Cassavetes" has been replaced by a short but informative interview with the film's director. Neither disc features the trailer, which is unfortunate, because it was a clever effort at marketing a film that defies easy categorization.

• John Cassavetes: A Discussion (480i; 1.33:1; 4:53): Excerpts from a panel at which people who knew him discuss John Cassavetes and his working methods. Participants include director Peter Bogdanovich, actor Seymour Cassel and cinematographer Al Ruban.



• A Conversation with Nick Cassavetes (480i; 1.33:1; 5:43): The director discusses the origin of the project and the casting of the main roles.

She's So Lovely Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I am constantly puzzled when someone discussing a film or TV shows derides a character for behaving "stupidly". More often than not, if it's a story with which I'm familiar, it's obvious that the behavior in question arises naturally out of the character or the situation (or both), which is something that we as audience members get to know more about from our privileged position outside the action. Drama, as the ancient Greeks understood (because they invented it), gives us the opportunity to observe reproachable, even reprehensible behavior from a minimum safe distance, because it isn't real and doesn't have actual consequences. The minute someone declares characters like Eddie, Maureen or Joey to be "dumb", they've missed the point of fiction. Yes, these imaginary people do foolish things—because they were created that way. The whole point of the exercise is to try to imagine why they do what they do. Highly recommended.