Sainte-Adèle

[ATTENTION: This review reveals content of the movie.]
This is a very well put together movie because it takes up a genuine structural challenge and deals with it in a meaningful way. Thus, the audience is confronted at the very opening with a problem that just could not have made the screen back when movies like "With Six You get Eggroll" were being produced -- the two main characters are presented to us as terminal cancer patients. This fact establishes the narrow and brief pathway within which the script can develop any sense of meaning for both the characters and, indirectly, the viewing audience. Now if you're Walt Disney and you have to solve this problem, you create a bridge to terabithia, which is to say you solve a real world dilemma with fantasy (no wonder he had himself frozen) The solution in Bucket List is far more elegant and one that, sadly enough, makes sense to a viewing audience that also needs its own bucket list - it involves the admission, by both characters, that their lives, in a very fundamental way, have not yet really begun. By introducing them as dying charaters, the writers create conditios whereby death is no longer something that living can overlook, and now living becomes something fresh in the face of it. All right, one of the characters is a billionaire and that gives you your fantasy fix, including flights over the North Pole and chit chats in the Taj Mahal (why didn't they mention that all workers on the Taj Mahal had their hands amputated afterward so that they could never again build anything -- 20,000 volunteers indeed!)Ultimately, however, both characters are forced to confront aspects of their uncompleted lives that cannot be resolved by trashing a Mustang Shelby or getting a tattoo; so I suppose it has something to say about the importance of a commitment to one's real life as well. Here's a film that reminds us why we should be pressuring studios to bring an end to this pathetic writer's strike. At the same time, the praise I heard from others walking out could not be reduced to way the structure resonates with any audience member's sense of life as something that has been overlooked. The charm of Nicholson and the genuineness of Freeman are ultimately the final ingredients that make this movie work.

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