Recently Seen: The Lake House (2006)
Apparently, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock have a shipname. And it's Keendra. That blew my mind when I first heard it, although it is no worse than most of the mashed up shipnames out there.
Anyway, The Lake House is THE Keeandra movie. Attempting to recapture the chemistry that the pair showed on screen all those eons ago in Speed, this movie is an unabashed old fashioned romance. Unlike many modern romcoms, there is no sex and the two protagonists do not even meet properly until the last 3 minutes of the movie. In that way, The Lake House has rather a lot in common with Sleepless in Seattle.
I don't think this will become a classic like Sleepless, although it is certainly as romantic and the leads are certainly equally as attractive. (In fact, some may say that with Reeves as the male lead, this movie comes out top on the attractiveness score.) This movie is very sweet and likeable and propelled by a genuine romantic compulsion, something missing from many movies with pretensions of being romantic. It is based on a screenplay from Korea, where they know a thing or two about romance. There is a sincerity in the writing of this movie that is the hallmark of the best Korean movie romances.
However, Korean romances also tend toward sentimentality and melodrama. Some of this has made the journey to Hollywood and unfortunately bogs down parts of The Lake House. There is a pivotal scene in the middle of the film where the two leads have an encounter, involving a dance and an almost kiss (or maybe an actual kiss? I don't know, I was too bored to pay full attention). It was a scene with potential for great angst or some clever humour. Instead, the writers and director chose to play it as sentimental, with a ballad playing in the background and the scene lit by the glow of dusk.
Still it is churlish to nitpick when the film so clearly has its heart in the right place. The plot device is a time-slip and it is expectedly in turn clever, full of holes, illogical and plausible. She is in the present, he is in the past. They manage to communicate with each other while both remain in their respective times. Neither know where he is in the present, and he is loathe to approach her in the past as she did not yet know him. Certainly, as plot devices go, this is one of the more effective ways to keep the star-crossed lovers decidedly apart until the final joyous rapproachment. I have to admit to rather liking the conceit behind the resolution of the time-slip. It was predictable, yes, but done without any nod-winking and self-conscious cleverness.
In the lead roles, Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are not stretched but do what they need to do. They are both thoroughly sympathetic and believable. I find myself rooting for them as individuals and for their relationship as a couple. Sandra Bullock plays noble workaholic doctor Kate, who works too hard and seems to have no life outside the hospital. Bullock rather specialises in pulling off these types of roles - the single modern woman who is somewhat lonely, who views her lot with good humour but is on the verge of sadness. The Keanu Reeves character, Alex, is an architect who is building the lake house. He has a side-arc involving his uneasy relationship with his father, played by Christopher Plummer. Usually, such sub-plots can come across as padding or filler material, but this was sensitively handled and relevant to the development of Reeves's character.
There are a few pretty illustrious names in supporting roles, including the great Shohreh Aghdashloo, the aforementioned Plummer and Niptuck's Dylan Walsh as Bullock's putative boyfriend.
You don't get a cast like this to put on a shoddy show. This is definitely not a shoddy show; the production values are superb. The eponymous lake house is a gorgeous glass construction and there are numerous scenes that showcase the beauties of the lake area in the fall and winter. It is a beautiful film to look at in more than one way. It is also heartfelt, feel-good and a pretty good way to while away a couple of hours.
Over-zealous Austen purist alert: I did have a major point to pick with the movie's use of Jane Austen's Persuasion as a symbolism for its themes of waiting and people being kept apart by time. It does not really mar my enjoyment of the show, but Persuasion is among my favourite books of all time, and it was rather jarring to have it quite thoroughly misrepresented.
A few of the Persuasion references worked very well. The initial almost-encounter between Kate and Alex takes place when he picks up her copy of Persuasion that she leaves behind on a train station bench. This neatly serves as a character note for Kate; she is an Austen reader, which tells us that she is slightly old-fashioned, a romantic and something of a softie.
The physical copy of the book also establishes a link between the two characters. Towards the end of the movie, Kate finds the exact same copy (now well thumbed and read, in a rather nice production touch) that he leaves under the floorboards of the lake house. She reads from it the line that Austen wrote about Wentworth and Anne Eliot during their first engagement - "... no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar ...". It reminds her of herself and Alex and she is shaken anew by the impossibility of their relationship. This works well, because at the same point in the book, Anne Eliot is similarly distressed at the distance that had grown between Frederick Wentworth and herself, despite their earlier compatibility.
If only they had kept the Austen references to these two scenes. Of course, Hollywood is never content until a piece of symbolism has hit us on our heads often and hard enough to induce a coma. And so, we have Kate and Alex discussing "Persuasion" just before they dance at Kate's birthday party. And what a wildly inaccurate discussion! Kate tells us that Persuasion is "wonderful" (it is), and that it is purportedly about two people who meet and "almost fall in love" (NO! NO! NO!) but the timing was not right (NO! NO! NO!) and then they meet again years later and have another chance at their relationship (yes, but only in a most oblique way).
Anyone who is halfway familiar with Persuasion knows that there is nothing "almost" about Wentworth's and Anne's first attachment. It was her family who stood in their way, not "timing", nor any lack of emotions. And when they meet again years later, he is not at all interested in a second chance and she is resigned that there would be none. Yes, Persuasion is about constancy, and in this respect, it has something in common with this movie. Persuasion is also about many other things that bear no parallel to the movie. And Persuasion is not about 'waiting' - had Wentworth overcome his pride 6 years earlier, there would have been no need for the long separation of time before seeing Anne again.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Anyway, The Lake House is THE Keeandra movie. Attempting to recapture the chemistry that the pair showed on screen all those eons ago in Speed, this movie is an unabashed old fashioned romance. Unlike many modern romcoms, there is no sex and the two protagonists do not even meet properly until the last 3 minutes of the movie. In that way, The Lake House has rather a lot in common with Sleepless in Seattle.
I don't think this will become a classic like Sleepless, although it is certainly as romantic and the leads are certainly equally as attractive. (In fact, some may say that with Reeves as the male lead, this movie comes out top on the attractiveness score.) This movie is very sweet and likeable and propelled by a genuine romantic compulsion, something missing from many movies with pretensions of being romantic. It is based on a screenplay from Korea, where they know a thing or two about romance. There is a sincerity in the writing of this movie that is the hallmark of the best Korean movie romances.
However, Korean romances also tend toward sentimentality and melodrama. Some of this has made the journey to Hollywood and unfortunately bogs down parts of The Lake House. There is a pivotal scene in the middle of the film where the two leads have an encounter, involving a dance and an almost kiss (or maybe an actual kiss? I don't know, I was too bored to pay full attention). It was a scene with potential for great angst or some clever humour. Instead, the writers and director chose to play it as sentimental, with a ballad playing in the background and the scene lit by the glow of dusk.
Still it is churlish to nitpick when the film so clearly has its heart in the right place. The plot device is a time-slip and it is expectedly in turn clever, full of holes, illogical and plausible. She is in the present, he is in the past. They manage to communicate with each other while both remain in their respective times. Neither know where he is in the present, and he is loathe to approach her in the past as she did not yet know him. Certainly, as plot devices go, this is one of the more effective ways to keep the star-crossed lovers decidedly apart until the final joyous rapproachment. I have to admit to rather liking the conceit behind the resolution of the time-slip. It was predictable, yes, but done without any nod-winking and self-conscious cleverness.
In the lead roles, Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are not stretched but do what they need to do. They are both thoroughly sympathetic and believable. I find myself rooting for them as individuals and for their relationship as a couple. Sandra Bullock plays noble workaholic doctor Kate, who works too hard and seems to have no life outside the hospital. Bullock rather specialises in pulling off these types of roles - the single modern woman who is somewhat lonely, who views her lot with good humour but is on the verge of sadness. The Keanu Reeves character, Alex, is an architect who is building the lake house. He has a side-arc involving his uneasy relationship with his father, played by Christopher Plummer. Usually, such sub-plots can come across as padding or filler material, but this was sensitively handled and relevant to the development of Reeves's character.
There are a few pretty illustrious names in supporting roles, including the great Shohreh Aghdashloo, the aforementioned Plummer and Niptuck's Dylan Walsh as Bullock's putative boyfriend.
You don't get a cast like this to put on a shoddy show. This is definitely not a shoddy show; the production values are superb. The eponymous lake house is a gorgeous glass construction and there are numerous scenes that showcase the beauties of the lake area in the fall and winter. It is a beautiful film to look at in more than one way. It is also heartfelt, feel-good and a pretty good way to while away a couple of hours.
Over-zealous Austen purist alert: I did have a major point to pick with the movie's use of Jane Austen's Persuasion as a symbolism for its themes of waiting and people being kept apart by time. It does not really mar my enjoyment of the show, but Persuasion is among my favourite books of all time, and it was rather jarring to have it quite thoroughly misrepresented.
A few of the Persuasion references worked very well. The initial almost-encounter between Kate and Alex takes place when he picks up her copy of Persuasion that she leaves behind on a train station bench. This neatly serves as a character note for Kate; she is an Austen reader, which tells us that she is slightly old-fashioned, a romantic and something of a softie.
The physical copy of the book also establishes a link between the two characters. Towards the end of the movie, Kate finds the exact same copy (now well thumbed and read, in a rather nice production touch) that he leaves under the floorboards of the lake house. She reads from it the line that Austen wrote about Wentworth and Anne Eliot during their first engagement - "... no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar ...". It reminds her of herself and Alex and she is shaken anew by the impossibility of their relationship. This works well, because at the same point in the book, Anne Eliot is similarly distressed at the distance that had grown between Frederick Wentworth and herself, despite their earlier compatibility.
If only they had kept the Austen references to these two scenes. Of course, Hollywood is never content until a piece of symbolism has hit us on our heads often and hard enough to induce a coma. And so, we have Kate and Alex discussing "Persuasion" just before they dance at Kate's birthday party. And what a wildly inaccurate discussion! Kate tells us that Persuasion is "wonderful" (it is), and that it is purportedly about two people who meet and "almost fall in love" (NO! NO! NO!) but the timing was not right (NO! NO! NO!) and then they meet again years later and have another chance at their relationship (yes, but only in a most oblique way).
Anyone who is halfway familiar with Persuasion knows that there is nothing "almost" about Wentworth's and Anne's first attachment. It was her family who stood in their way, not "timing", nor any lack of emotions. And when they meet again years later, he is not at all interested in a second chance and she is resigned that there would be none. Yes, Persuasion is about constancy, and in this respect, it has something in common with this movie. Persuasion is also about many other things that bear no parallel to the movie. And Persuasion is not about 'waiting' - had Wentworth overcome his pride 6 years earlier, there would have been no need for the long separation of time before seeing Anne again.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Labels: Movie Reviews
posted by gentleice the deptfordian at 1:11 AM
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