Feast of Love is an unabashedly romantic look at the contribution of love to human existence. Set entirely in a beautifully photographed Portland, it’s an ensemble drama about the romantic interludes of connected lives – sort of a stateside version of Love Actually.
Acting as a character but also sometimes seeming omniscient, Morgan Freeman plays an elder statesman who dispenses wisdom tempered with grandfatherly love. He’s sort of a combination of the Oracle of Delphi, Socrates and Jesus: all knowing, all-loving, yet always speaking just indirectly enough and leaving just enough wiggle room in his perfectly modulated pronouncements that those who seek his counsel ultimately have to make up their own minds.
You know, the same role Freeman plays in every movie.
Greg Kinnear is a sweet-hearted schmuck who is clueless about women. His first wife leaves him for another woman. His second wife never even bothered to give up her boyfriend when she married Kinnear. Greg seems to miss the little clues. For example, when his first wife is in a bar after a softball game and the opposing shortstop rubs her thighs and tells her that the song on the jukebox is now “their song,” Greg takes no notice. When his second wife has to think before, “I do.” Greg doesn’t think it’s all that bad.
You know, the same role Kinnear plays in every movie.
Jane Alexander plays the meddling, yet compassionate, old busybody who discusses all the other characters with her wise husband.
You know, the same role Alexander plays in Tell Me You Love Me.
Well, one certainly has to offer a tip o’ the hat to the casting director.
The other key relationships involve the chemistry between Kinnear’s second wife (Radha Mitchell) and the guy she really loves behind Kinnear’s back, and a couple of idealistic youngsters who are desperate for money.
The attitude of the people who loved the movie can be summed up by Time’s capsule summary
Sexy, funny, sad and defiantly romantic, Feast of Love is the rare movie to cuddle up to.
The attitude of the people who hated this movie can be summed up by the Guardian’s one-star review, written by Peter Bradshaw.
Syrupy, drivelly, snivelly nonsense, which stars Morgan Freeman as a wise, humorous, rumbly-voiced wearer of reading glasses – great to see Morgan challenging himself as an actor, isn’t it? Squeaky-clean Greg Kinnear plays his friend, a lovelorn romantic guy who runs a coffee shop yuckily called Jitters,
It is a supposedly heartwarming emotional drama in what I call the life-affirming-laughter-and-tears genre – ie, the genre that makes me want to spray the nearest shopping mall with bullets before turning the gun on myself. Kinnear’s wife runs out on him with another woman, like an episode from TV’s The L Word, but this faintly interesting storyline is supplanted by others far more boring and unreal, reeking with phoney empathy and creepy lite-eroticism. If it’s a choice between cleaning out the shed and seeing this – opt for the shed.
Those two reviews, and all of their subtext, probably tell you everything you need to know about the film.
Bradshaw does have a point. You’ll have to keep your hankies nearby, because this is a classic chick-flick in the sub-division of weep-fest. Furthermore, there is nothing new here in terms of the characters, and the plot is so transparent that every single event in the film, without exception, is telegraphed about five scenes in advance. Don’t expect any surprises.
But Bradshaw’s point is not just about the movie. It’s also about him, and his own disdain for this kind of unhip film. Yes, it is so predictable and unhip that it seems Frank Capra must have returned from the grave to create it, but it is a competent film with a warm heart. The way I see it is that the film’s failures in depth and originality must be balanced against a generosity of spirit that will inspire you to feel better about the human race when you leave the theater.
And some people actually like a movie to cuddle up to.
This was one of our top nude scenes of 2007
Wow, she looks great – no wonder this was an award-winning nude scene.
My guess is that filmmakers add female nudity to this type of movie so that boyfriends will tolerate being dragged to a “chick flick” by their girlfriends.
I doubt that’s the reason in this case. Rather, this is a director who was always comfortable having nudity in his toolbox for dramatic storytelling, often as a means to tell the story in a far more authentic and honest way. Look at the long scene linked here– Radha Mitchell’s character and the other guy have just had sex and are talking and arguing in the aftermath of it. It’s a situation we’ve seen hundreds of times in film or television, but most of the time the characters are inexplicable in their underwear. But this scene gives a more real idea of how two people would be in the situation– still naked in bed, and not behave as if they know a camera is on them.
So the point of the scene isn’t the nudity, it’s the talking and arguing. Got it.
But if the dialogue is the point, why is she naked? Oh, right, REALISM.
But if realism is the point, why cast a beautiful woman and give her perfect hair and makeup and flattering lighting for the scene? Why not cast an average-looking woman and make her appear realistically post-sex disheveled? Do ordinary people not have sex and argue afterward? That’s more realistic.
We cast beautiful people in movies because the audience would rather watch beautiful people than ordinary ones. If they’re naked, so much the better.
I’ve even heard there are whole websites devoted to nudity in film.
Sure, Robert Benton uses nudity as a tool in his films – A tool to get butts into seats.
Who remembers the dramatic story details of “Billy Bathgate?” Nobody.
We remember full-frontal Nicole Kidman.
I remember the dramatic story of “Billy Bathgate”. It was the story of the decline and fall of the gangster “Dutch Schultz”. It began with his murder of his right hand man, and ended with his death in a restaurant in New Jersey. It was told from the point of view of a very young man who joined Schultz’s gang in order to get himself, and hopefully his girlfriend, out of poverty. It was a well told story.
One could argue that Kidman’s nudity is just as gratuitous and crowd-pleasing as Mitchell’s. Or just as illustrative of the character she was playing.
“Why not cast an average-looking woman and make her appear realistically post-sex disheveled?”
Even if there is no nudity the average actress is prettier than the average woman, because people are more willing to watch movies with pretty people than with ugly ones.
This is completely independent of the nudity. Realistic dramas don’t usually cast ugly women either, because pretty stars sell more tickets.
NIce post, you could also search for the actress’ comments for these scenes. I seem to remember Radha said something like they approached it like a French movie scene, talking while naked.
“As for the film’s copious amount of explicit nudity, Mitchell concedes thinking long and hard before agreeing to do a film, which involved full frontal nudity. “It’s certainly confronting to play out but the sensibility, and it’s more European than it is American,” she says, referring to a pivotal moment involving a bitter argument that takes plays in the nude. “It’s not so puritanical and people do get naked in the bedroom together and that’s kind of how it is. So if the story is going to be real it’s going to be a reality of two people having a fight, in the nude, as you would, in life. People behave that way, so there’s a naturalism to that but then, to play out that naturalism, granted the convention of our society, in front of a bunch of crew members is something else.”
Despite an Oscar winning director at the helm, Mitchell did have her reservations. “Normally in these things there’s some sort of statement in the contract like ‘You will show this much of your boob’ or whatever. It’s very specific, whereas in this they just said ‘Are you comfortable with this or not, because if you’re not, don’t worry about the film’. So you had to sort of sit there and think about, ‘Am I comfortable with that?’ ‘Am I not comfortable?’ ‘How do I feel about that?’ Obviously I was comfortable with it enough to agree to it and then the experience of it I found quite liberating in a way,” Mitchell concedes. But she also doubts she would do such explicit nudity again. “I wouldn’t want to make a career out of that because it could be misinterpreted and perceived in a different light to what my intent was. Therefore it wouldn’t be something I would constantly do, not because it was such a bad experience, it’s just not an agenda that I want to create.”
Also really like the other full frontal in this from Alexa Davalos, gorgeous actress who never made it big
Fun fact: Alexa Davalos’ dad is photographer Jeff Dunas who discovered Cameron Diaz and took those really explicit photos of Demi Moore published in Penthouse Spain and Playboy Germany.
Yeah Alexa Davalos got her bush out in this also. It’s dimly lit, but I believe that may have been the only time she went FF.
Was this ever released in 4k?