Deborah Lipp

Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School (2005) 9/10
On an isolated road, Frank (Robert Carlyle) comes across a devastating car accident. He calls 911 and waits with Steve (John Goodman). Since the dispatcher told him to keep the victim talking, Frank learns that Steve was on his way to the Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School for a fated meeting.

When I first saw an ad for this movie, it looked interesting. Then I saw terrible reviews: 22% on RottenTomatoes, 2 stars from Ebert, and I passed.

Well, the other night Arthur and I saw a preview for it, and it just looked so charming, so I took a chance, and my oh my I’m glad I did.

The movie follows three paths; Frank and Steve by the roadside, and then in the ambulance, Steve’s childhood, during which he attended the titular school, and Frank’s life following his encounter with Steve. The tone is poignant, sad, wistful, and fantastical. There’s something of the fable in this story, something as if Frank has gone down the rabbit hole, and the Red Queen is Marilyn’s daughter (Mary Steenburgen), still teaching dance as if forty years had not passed since Steve’s fond memories of his childhood.

Steve wants to meet the girl he loved when he was twelve years old; the girl he promised to meet at the dance school on this day. Certain of the rightness of this reunion, he crashes on the way, and presses his ticket onto Frank to go in his stead, and tell Lisa he tried to make it. Everyone in this story lives atop a terrible pain; Steve alludes to a dark choice made long ago, Frank attends a widower’s therapy group where no one seems to be getting much better, Miss Hotchkiss’s daughter pretends her mother had not been dead for thirty years, and on and on.

In this fable, everyone can either carry a burden or put it down. Everyone can change or stay the same, and dance is the means by which they will discover what to choose. It is tender and sentimental, but not corny, and it is populated by wonderful characters: Meredith (Marisa Tomei), her lunatic companion Randall (Donnie Wahlberg), Gabe (Adam Arkin) who is full of anger at his late wife, and really, a host of familiar character actors who make the action light and funny and charming.

Some movies are fables. They are not meant to be closely examined for what really would have happened. They are magical tales, and the qualities of a musical (although this really isn’t a musical) are there to clue you into the fantastical elements, so that you won’t be too bound up by the need for veracity. Still, some people are going to hate that sort of thing. I’m not one of them.

The original 1990 short film, concerned only with the school as it was in 1962, is included on the DVD.

Mozart and the Whale (2005) 10/10
Donald (Josh Hartnett) has Asperger’s Syndrome. He runs a group for other people with Asperger’s, austism, and other socially-isolating disorders. When Isabelle (Radha Mitchell) joins the group, a tentative romance begins.

I see a fair number of movies. And most of them are good, because I’m picky and I read reviews and I have no taste for “so bad it’s good.” I see many movies I like, admire, and recommend. But I don’t fall in love all that often. I don’t often say, “Oh, my,” with stars in my eyes after seeing a movie, and that’s what happened with Mozart and the Whale.

So I saw this movie with my son, and he has Asperger’s, and that kind of colors everything, doesn’t it? I mean, I rearranged my Netflix when he came home from college so that there were movies we would want to see together. But this could all have backfired. Because Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a part of Asperger’s, not getting it right can be painful, and any sense of humor about sensitive subjects is right out, and overall, I was fully prepared for him to run out of the room. (As an aside, the movie opens with the unusual disclaimer, “This movie is a work of fiction based on a true story.” Most movies use a shorter “based on a true story” statement, and I am 100% certain that the longer version was needed to appease the OCD of Aspies being depicted.)

So where was I? Right, run screaming. He didn’t. He loved it. It may be his new favorite movie (except he has a whole OCD thing about calling things his favorite). He declared Isabelle “my perfect woman.” He related to the characters, who were not cute or pretty or comic relief fodder or disgusting or charming or inspiring or heroic or any of the other things that we expect to happen to real people when they become movie characters. In fact, the only way Donald and Isabelle were movied-up is that they were played by breathtakingly pretty people.

The whole thing works. The supporting cast (including Rusty Schwimmer, Gary Cole, and John Carroll Lynch) do the job. The filming is understated and warm. The cinematography and set decoration work to convey these people and how they place themselves in the world. The love story is unbelievably touching. And the sum total is that you feel enriched just to have watched it. Just to have been there, witnessing the act of loneliness being eased by love.

Just see it, ‘kay?