Hope Springs

Film (2012)

With Meryl Streep (Kay), Tommy Lee Jones (Arnold), Steve Carell (Dr. Feld)

Kay (Meryl Streep) and Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) are a married couple well into middle age. They sleep in separate bedrooms and have a truce, but little affection, with one another. In a moment of desperation, Kay signs them up for couples counseling. How this attempt turns out produces the rest of the tale.

It is hard to say much about this movie without giving it away, so, if you want to be totally surprised, perhaps you should leave off reading this. Having said that, what happens is not a very big surprise – it is hard to imagine walking into this movie without having some sense of what it might be.

Basically, Kay and Arnold do go to counseling and something happens. I won’t tell you whether it saves their marriage or not – that, in the end, is the only real surprise.

The subject of this film is interesting and important, but the treatment is, by and large, partial and episodic. The script focuses almost entirely on sex therapy, which makes this film a little perkier but less nuanced than it might be.

With all of that sex therapy, the film still retains its PG-13 rating, a testament to just how quaintly endearing geezer sex must seem to the ratings people.

The three main characters are all excellent actors, but this film puts their talents to less use than it might.

Meryl Streep is a world-class actor and it is strange to have felt that her performance in this film is not that compelling. Since practically everything she does is superb, I can only think that there is something really off with the writing and direction here. Even in Mamma Mia (2008), one of the worst films I have seen in recent memory, Streep shone in her own way and it was fun to watch her as I suffered through the rest of it. Though she depicts a nuanced character here in Hope Springs, the effect of that depiction, in the end, is somewhat weak. For me, that was the real surprise here.

Steve Carell plays the therapist and it is both odd and reassuring to see him in this straight role. He usually plays his comedic roles with such a subtle twist of character that the merest detection of it makes these depictions very funny.

But here, as is somewhat the case in Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (2012), he plays it quite straight. In those films, he depicts sad sacks, which are not really funny, but rather, ironic.

Here, as the therapist, one might have detected the vaguest trace of satire were the film more subtly wrought. But it does not have that degree of subtlety, and his character simply comes across as straight. He does a decent job of it – though, in the end, because the satire does not come through, it is not clear why a comedic actor of his capacities was chosen for this role.

Of the three principals, Tommy Lee Jones comes off the best. His part is the clearest in many ways, and it affords a more direct path to character transformation. He carries that off very well through a deft manipulation of mood. He is so stony and grumpy through so much of the film that when that changes it really makes an impression.

The sound track to this movie is omnipresent and distracting and I could have done without most of it.

It is great to see a film that deals with the emotional and sexual problems of long-married couples. It is an interesting subject that demands far more attention that it receives. This film breaks some ground in that regard and its actors make noble attempts to bring forth that narrative, but it would need considerably more nuanced writing and direction to be as compellingly subtle as its subject deserves it to be.

– BADMan