Review: The Longest Week

Conrad Valmont is an over-educated, over-indulged, fortysomething, ne'er-do-nothing perfectly content to live off his parents' largesse. As he is played by Jason Bateman, he is also a jerk and possibly all the more lovable for being so.

Two things happen to Conrad which test his character, or lack thereof: he is evicted from the lap of luxury and he encounters the beauteous Beatrice Fairbanks, with whom he is immediately enchanted. As she is portrayed by Olivia Wilde, this is a perfectly reasonable reaction. Unfortunately, Beatrice is also the paramour of Conrad's longtime friend Dylan Tate (embodied with a certain polished shagginess by Billy Crudup), who likens her to "an ingenue from a Chekhov play."

Such literary references are liberally crumbled throughout the film by director Peter Glanz and co-screenwriter Juan Iglesias. The characters inhabit the social circles and behaviours Jane Austen keenly dissected in Sense and Sensibility, the novel Beatrice is seen reading when Conrad's eyes first alight upon her. Glanz and Iglesias namecheck Wharton, Fitzgerald and Salinger - why not? All the better to prove they read their high-school summer reading lists.

The Longest Week uses that literary device - the omniscient narrator - that all of the aforementioned novelists wielded to less successful effect. Narration takes the place of actual characterisation in Glanz's film - the audience is twice told that "Conrad often became attached to the idea of something, and not the actual thing itself." This more tell, less show method distances the characters from viewers - it's akin to building a bridge with no intention of connecting.

Glanz scaffolds the already verging on precious screenplay ("How was Greece?" "You mean Bhutan." "Semantics.") with stylised visuals that are more than reminiscent of Wes Anderson's symmetrically composed, obsessively detailed tableaus. Glanz practically has an epileptic seizure in his nod to French New Wave cinema - Conrad and Beatrice strolling around Manhattan in a lovers' haze or, apropos of nothing, breaking out into a dance.

Which is all well and good. There are moments when the film relaxes and lets itself charm you. Unfortunately, most of the time Glanz's influences smother you to distraction. The actors do what they can with the constraints: Bateman and Crudup are fine, though more of Jenny Slate's tartness would have been most welcome. Wilde, however, gets the short end of the stick. There are times when you sense her trying to break free of Glanz's construct - you see emotions rippling beneath her skin, a flash of energy behind the eyes - but he refuses such deviation from his design. He should take heed of his heroes: Godard and Truffaut filmed their muses with adoration, capturing them on celluloid to immortalise not mummify.

The Longest Week

Directed by: Peter Glanz

Written by: Peter Glanz, Juan Iglesias

Starring: Jason Bateman, Olivia Wilde, Billy Crudup, Jenny Slate, Tony Roberts