a SIFF 2010 review
Quirky Man an Eccentric Oddity
Young English teacher Louis Ives (Paul Dano) has just found himself out of a job. He tends to fantasize himself as being like the hero in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, but after an embarrassing incident the Princeton prep school at which he works can no longer keep him around. He’s just too much of a bizarre wildcard, and no matter how prim and proper he tries to be the guy’s an odd duck people have trouble relating to.
Kevin Kline in The Extra Man © Magnolia Pictures
Impetuously moving to New York City, Louis manages to rent a room from penniless playwright Henry Harrison (Kevin Kline) while also obtaining a job at an environmental magazine where he quickly becomes infatuate with sexy, vegan, green-obsessed coworker Mary (Katie Holmes). While trying to come up with ways to woo the latter he also quickly comes to learn the former is a somewhat crazed eccentric who makes the majority of his living by being an “extra man” for wealthy Manhattan high society widows. Stuck between a somewhat normal world he’s felt distant from and a far more robust one filled with its own kind of whimsy Louis begins to go on a journey the likes of which even Fitzgerald never could have imagined.
First off, as a star vehicle for Kevin Kline The Extra Man, based on the novel by Jonathan Ames, is a smashing delight. He owns this film, his robust, almost over the top performance a sensational bit of playacting that’s perfectly mesmerizing. As nasty as Henry sometimes can be thanks to Kline I absolutely adored him, and more often than not anytime he was onscreen this was one highly unusual dramatic comedy I didn’t remotely want to take my eyes off of.
The second note, while mostly positive, isn’t quite as euphoric. You see, while the film is a definite bounce in the right direction for married American Splendor auteurs Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman after the underwhelming insignificance of The Nanny Diaries, it isn’t a huge one. The end product, for all its winning moments, bits of delectable whimsy and subtle nuance, is frustratingly really rather slight, and as much as I want to say I loved it the sad truth borders on the opposite.
My issues mainly all have to do with Louis whom I ended up having a humongous love/hate relationship with. On the one hand, his journey with gender and identity is refreshingly poignant and touching. On the other, the way Dano portrays the character is rigidly distant and at time off-putting. For every moment of warmth and tenderness there would be two or three making me rigidly uncomfortable, and as much as I wanted to feel something for the guy there was just something about him that kept me at arm’s length.
Granted, that is what in large part does make Louis a Fitzgerald-like character. He is walking oxymoron, filled to the brim with competing tendencies and character traits that often sit in direct conflict one with the other. He is also, even when he is making his baby step journey into gender exploration, a freakily unsettling observer, so passively uncertain that at times he becomes difficult to be around.
Yet the movie is hardly a lost cause. Louis does make for a strong catalyst at times, and his central relationship with Henry build in intrigue as the film progresses. I also like the fact that Pulcini and Berman refuse to bow to convention, keeping their characters as prickly and as quirky as possible even if that means potentially turning off a portion of their audience by doing so. The film is also expertly paced and exquisitely shot by Terry Stacey (Dear John), and for all my reservations there is just something about the picture that held me captivated all the way until the climax.
Holmes is rather delightful as the ingénue of the piece, while John C. Reilly, Marian Seldes, Lynn Cohen, John Pankow, Dan Hedaya and Patti D’Arbanville pop up in important character bits adding a bit more screwball color to a picture already bursting at the seams with just that. The picture revels in its own unconventionality, The Extra Man a consistently engaging curiosity even when some of its more important pieces don’t quite live up to the glorious oddities surrounding them.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
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