The City of Your Final Destination
Cinema Nova, 18/10/2010
Status: Behind by 7 films
This film should have thrilled me. It’s an adaptation of a terrific novel about Things That Interest Me like complex relationships, literature, the nature of art and the blurry line between fiction and autobiography. It has a great cast and a director who, over a long career, has sustained a pretty high average. Like I say, should have thrilled me.
British writer Jules Gund has recently died. An American grad student comes to his home in Uruguay seeking authorization for a biography. He finds Gund’s wife, mistress, daughter, brother and brother’s lover all living together with the vacuum that used to be Gund. The cast (including LAURA LINNEY, ANTHONY HOPKINS and CHARLOTTE GAINSBOROUGH) are all terrific actors, but you wouldn’t know it from this film, as they kind of plod through it looking bored or exceptionally uncomfortable. The script is a very good example of how not to adapt a little-read book for the screen and the direction by JAMES IVORY is staid, uninteresting and, at times, a little bewildering.
All the ingredients were there, they just weren’t put together right. The City of Your Final Destination should have thrilled me. Really, really didn’t.
