Strained relations

>> Multi-character romantic drama Feast of Love
is well made but falls short of greatness

by MALCOLM FRASER

There’s a certain kind of mainstream American film that’s hard to evaluate critically—the kind that falls far short in comparison to an excellent movie, but that’s head and shoulders above your average Hollywood mediocrity, so that judging its merits depends on your criteria. Such is the conundrum posed by Feast of Love, the new drama from director Robert Benton (Nobody’s Fool, Kramer vs. Kramer).

A multi-character tale set in Portland, Oregon, the story begins with Bradley (Greg Kinnear), a coffee shop owner and sometime artist who fails to notice his wife Kathryn (Selma Blair) starting up a relationship with another woman. This storyline is quickly abandoned as Kinnear starts another relationship with Diana (Radha Mitchell), a sexy real-estate agent who’s herself involved in an extramarital affair. Meanwhile, Kinnear’s young hottie employees Oscar (Toby Hemingway) and Chloe (Alexa Davalos) are starting their own romance under the disapproving eye of Hemingway’s no-good father (Fred Ward).

The whole thing is narrated and presided over by Morgan Freeman as Harry, a local professor and all-around grandfather figure to the other characters. It seems that when Freeman isn’t playing grizzled detectives, he’s either literally playing God, as in the Almighty flicks, or a similarly omnipresent and benign authority figure, always quick with a kindly smile and a few well-chosen words of wisdom. He does it well, and the screenplay gives him some character development to work with, but there are no surprises; he’s doing the Morgan Freeman thing. The rest of the cast is similarly competent. Kinnear’s sad-sack protagonist is sympathetic, but the role suffers in comparison to his similar but superior character in Little Miss Sunshine.

Benton’s reputation is as an old-school solid craftsman (although his last film, The Human Stain, was a mess), and the film is well made. But you get the feeling that, Spielberg-like, he couldn’t resist softening the story’s hard edges and wrapping it all up with a nice happy ending. Again, I must stress that it’s way better than a typical Hollywood drama—plus there’s quite a bit of sex and nudity. But exactly because of its use of generic Hollywood tropes, the film ultimately falls frustratingly short of greatness.

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