Take This Waltz

I have avoided posting about this film because I was a little embarrassed to have watched it and a little embarrassed to have liked it so much despite a serious cheese factor in many of the scenes. Jason Bellamy hits it with these paragraphs:

In what might be the low point of Polley's scripted explicitness, Daniel, who has already painted an interpretive split-bodied portrait of Margot that they analyze together lest the symbolism escape us ("Maybe half isn't living up to her full potential ..."), makes this observation: "You seem restless. Not just now. Like, in a permanent way." To which Margot responds with a profound, seemingly ready-made babysitting story that somehow or another gets here: "Sometimes a shaft of sunlight falls across the pavement in a certain way and I want to cry." 

Yeesh. Even Terrence Malick would be embarrassed by the homespun poetry of that line. And yet, Michelle Williams is so genuine, so heartfelt that some of this stuff almost works. 

What a talent she is! Over a relatively short career, Williams has played glamorous and shabby women, bubbly and depressed women, attention-grabbing and overlooked women, but Margot presents an interesting challenge precisely because Polley's screenplay often tries to do Williams' work for her. In response, Williams takes Polley's hyper-aware, melodramatic verse and funnels it through an exterior so modest that we never confuse Margot for a movie star, even though she talks like one. I'm not sure it's worth seeing the movie to see the performance, but the performance makes the movie watchable.

My prediction: Brandon, John, Jeffrey, and Chris find nothing redeemable in this film. Jason and Adrienne reservedly enjoy it. Lisa finds it right in her romantic indie wheelhouse. Jerzy watches for the Sarah Silverman and Michelle Williams full frontal and isn't disappointed.