Paul Haggis, the
Academy Award-winning writer-director of “Crash,” is back in similar territory
with “Third Person,” another multi-narrative, everyone-is-connected melodrama which unfortunately shares many of the same
problems that plagued his ponderously didactic Best Picture winner.
His new film weaves
together three separate storylines taking place in
three different countries. In the first, an award-winning novelist (Liam Neeson) alternately cavorts and fights with his
mistress/protege (Olivia Wilde) in Paris while his wife (Kim Basinger) chain-smokes back at home. In Rome, a corporate
spy in the fashion industry (Adrien Brody) flirts
with a beautiful illegal Romanian immigrant (Moran Atias),
and finds himself getting roped into her attempts to
smuggle her young daughter into the country. And finally, in New York City, a
frantic former soap opera star (Mila Kunis) battles
her artist ex-husband (James Franco) to regain custody of their son after he
nearly died as the result of an accident with a dry-cleaning bag while in her
care.
Everything builds to
the reveal of what it is that connects these stories, but when it finally
comes, it arrives with a thud. Haggis telegraphs the climax revelation by
sprinkling hints throughout, along with the occasional mysteriously overlapping
geography of the stories (flowers left by Neeson’s
character in his hotel are found by Kunis in New
York, etc.). Haggis is at his best when he limits himself to a straightforward,
single narrative thread (as with “In the Valley of Elah”
or his scripts for “Million Dollar Baby” and “Casino Royale”). Here, he can’t
contain his penchant for artificial sentimentality and obvious symbolism about “What
It All Means,” and the storytelling comes across as overly calculated and
heavy-handed.
Still, “Third
Person” is always compellingly watchable, largely thanks to strong performances
from the entire ensemble (Wilde in particular deserves credit for making her
manic character seem believable as an actual human being), but the admirable
efforts of the actors are sadly undone by clumsily contrived writing and the
sense that they’re ultimately not playing people so much as mismatched puzzle
pieces crammed together to create a picture. Once you step back and take a
look, the picture doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2014.
