Review: Third Person
For his latest effort Third Person, writer-director Paul Haggis returns to the multi-strand narrative he deployed to Oscar-winning effect in Crash. Here the stories are slightly less interlocking and more similar facets of the overall themes of loss, guilt and renewal.
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Michael (Liam Neeson) is in a Parisian hotel suite, curtains drawn, an ashtray full of cigarette stubs by his laptop whose screen displays his latest work-in-progress. Theresa (Maria Bello) stands on the edge of a swimming pool before abruptly walking away. A harried Julia (Mila Kunis) passes by a child's empty bedroom before heading out into the bustling streets of New York. In Rome, Scott (Adrien Brody) receives design sketches which he will soon knock off. Anna (Olivia Wilde) changes outfits in the back of a cab much to the delight of her Parisian taxi driver. Rick (James Franco), a famous painter, tries in vain to interest his son in painting. A woman in red, whom we later learn is a Romanian gypsy named Monica (Moran Atias), walks into a local bar in Rome and immediately catches Scott's eye.
Connections are soon made evident or established. Scott involves himself in Monica's plight to recover her young daughter. All she needs is 2500 euros. Beguiled by her prideful beauty and thinking of his tenuous relationship with his own daughter, he insists on helping her even as the surrounding circumstances become ever more dangerous and all signs point to the enterprise being a con. More lost children come into play in the New York segment: Theresa, whose mobile screensaver is of a young boy, is representing Julia, a former soap opera actress who gave up her career when she became pregnant. It's revealed she may have had a hand in endangering her son's life, though she ferociously maintains she was only protecting him. Completely out of sorts and low on income, she's intent on gaining visitation rights despite her ex-husband Rick's attempts to cut her off. Kunis is a whirlwind of desperation, her eyes frantic, her body taut with despair - it's a one-note character but boy does Kunis play the hell out of that note.
The strongest piece of Haggis's cinematic puzzle, however, is the tumultuous love affair between Neeson's Michael and Wilde's Anna. The games these two play. Cruelty is an aphrodisiac whether it be in the form of Michael locking a naked Anna out of his hotel room or Anna taking every word that comes out of his mouth and using it against him. It could be as innocuous as hearing his critique of her short story as beautiful but cold and retorting, "Surprisingly what you always say about me," or her disproportionate anger when he reveals he left his wife (Kim Basinger) two weeks prior. Yet Anna has her own dark secrets to keep.
Neeson and Wilde are superb. It's easy to see why he can't let go of her - for all her terrible behaviour, she's electric and full of life and Wilde embodies the character with a level of depth heretofore undisplayed. "I know what that smile costs," he tells her at one point and it seems an uncharacteristically keen insight from a man accused of using his fictional characters to explore his personal dramas.
Haggis plays a metaphysical trick or two with the otherwise strictly architected narrative; the break in logic ultimately makes sense at the film's conclusion though it can be distracting if you haven't sussed out the main game in play. As with Crash, Haggis has a tendency to overstate his themes - whether this is a lack of confidence in his own material or merely not being able to kill his darlings is debatable. Still, there's a lot to piece and re-piece and re-piece some more in Third Person, which somehow manages to be both empty and meaningful.
Third Person
Directed by: Paul Haggis
Written by: Paul Haggis
Starring: Liam Neeson, Olivia Wilde, Mila Kunis, James Franco, Adrien Brody, Moran Atias, Maria Bello, Kim Basinger
