Review: At First Sight

Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino are certainly two of the oddest names on cinema's roster. He's the Adonis with the reputation of Narcissus, a movie star who insists on being an actor. She is the Harvard graduate who became an Oscar-winning ingenue, the daughter of a character actor who burns to be a movie star. They both could have their wishes if only their brains didn't get in the way. And here they both are, letting their star quality shine through in a surprisingly affecting romantic drama called At First Sight.

At First Sight is indeed a combination of two genres for to solely categorize it as either a romance or a drama would be to overlook a significant component. Both genres, neither one of which interlopes upon the other, are well-fused by Irwin Winkler, an Oscar-winning producer (Rocky, Raging Bull, Goodfellas) who happens to be a serviceable director. His three previous films -- Guilty By Suspicion with Robert De Niro, Annette Bening and Martin Scorsese, among others, attempting to ward off the onset of McCarthyist attacks in Hollywood; Night and the City, a remake of Jules Dassin's classic noir, with DeNiro and Jessica Lange as back street lovers fleeing the mob; and The Net, a technological thriller with Sandra Bullock as a hapless hacker who finds out just how technology can literally eradicate humanity -- outline Winkler's modus operandi: take a provocative tale, buoy it with an expert cast and just steer clear.

The formula is firmly in place in At First Sight. New York City architect Amy Benic (Sorvino) finds herself falling in love with small-town masseuse Virgil Adamson (Kilmer). The axis on which the story spins is the fact that Virgil is blind and Amy has learned of a procedure that could restore his sight. Virgil, who's been blind since the age of three, is the perfect candidate to be one of only 20 people in the last 200 years to have their blindness reversed. But moving into the big city and seeing everything for the first time turns out to be an unsurprisingly difficult transition. Frustrated beyond comprehension, Virgil closes himself off from Amy. Two lovers become strangers.

The film's romantic mood is introduced early on. Virgil's massages force the intimacy which suffuses the film -- the hushed tones, the breathy conversations, the close contacts. And Sorvino gets it so right. Too often she has appeared depthless, uncentered and out of focus. As Amy, she emits an endearing, hopeful radiance. When she gazes at Kilmer, the lovingness with which she does so is palpable. "When he touches me," she confides to a coworker, "I feel like it's to get to know me better. Even though he doesn't know what I look like, I feel he knows who I am." Though Sorvino has yet to validate her Academy Award for her supporting actress turn in Mighty Aphrodite, the dreaminess with which she portrays Amy is a step forward. With any luck, her role in novelist Paul Auster's Lulu on the Bridge should reconfirm her status as an actress to watch.

Kilmer, on the other hand, is a bit scattershot. The manner in which he portrays Virgil is a bit misguided at times. Though the character's other senses are heightened to the wonders of the world -- part of what attracts Amy to Virgil is his ability to extract the extraordinary from the ordinary -- this does not mean that he is a man who just fell to earth. While that take may work for the sequences post-sight restoration, it mars the equilibrium of the earlier scenes. Sorvino works solo for a better part of their scenes together -- he is stubbornly intent on not giving off any heat.

Among the supporting players, there is the energetic Nathan Lane, in effect portraying Dr. Oliver Sacks, on whose book To See and Not See the film is based upon. Lane is a delight though his energy distracts from the matters at hand. However, Kelly McGillis as Virgil's self-sacrificing sister contributes a performance that glows with grit and collapsed grandeur. Where has she been all these years?

At First Sight

Directed by: Irwin Winkler

Written by: Steve Levitt; based on the book To See and Not See by Oliver Sacks

Starring: Val Kilmer, Mira Sorvino, Nathan Lane, Steven Weber, Kelly McGillis, Bruce Davison, Ken Howard