Brilliant Close Stands Atop Heights

Glenn Close was one of the performers singled out for their acting during this year’s edition of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). While she didn’t win (the audience-voted Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actress went to “Yes” star Joan Allen), it is still easy to see why SIFF audiences loved her enough to make her a runner-up. Playing New York stage legend and cinema star Diana, Close is mesmerizing, commanding the screen like only a performer of her brilliance can. Hers is a deeply passionate turn, at time funny, at times sad, but always personal and true. She’s wonderful, deserving of praise and honor for plumbing such intricately laced psychological depths so splendidly.

If only the rest of the movie in question, Chris Terrio’s debut feature “Heights,” was worth all the effort. Like Annette Benning’s Oscar-nominated turn in last year’s otherwise lackluster “Being Julia,” Close is simply wonderful while the majority of the picture around her is only just this side of okay. Based on the one act stage play by Amy Fox (who co-wrote the screenplay – sort of – with director Terrio), this day-in-the-life melodrama annoys almost as much as it entertains. Moments here stretch credulity to their breaking point, but just as you think it’s finally going to fall of the edge and slip into unforgivable cliché somehow Terrio, Close and company manage to stage a scene of staggering beauty giving “Heights” new wind to fill its sails.

The story is simple enough. Bridal photographer Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) spends the afternoon going through the motions of her job while ruminating on her coming nuptials with successful attorney Jonathan (James Marsden). She loves her fiancé, she just isn’t sure he’s being completely honest with her. Truth is, he’s not, Jonathan doing all he can to make sure Vanity Fair reporter Ian (Andrew Howard) stays as far away from him and his girlfriend as humanly possible. Ian is writing an article about a noted European photographer and artist, an artist he just so happens to be dating, and in interviewing all his lovers’ exes for the piece the author has found one common thread. They all hate him.

Diana is Isabel’s mother, the New York icon going through her own mid-life crisis as she comes to realize her ideas on love and marriage might have been horribly misplaced. Add George Segal as a sensitive Rabbi, Rufus Wainwright as a flirty (and angry) ex-lover, Isabella Rossellini as an acerbic editor and Jesse Bradford as an aspiring actor with more ties to Jonathan and Isabel than just an apartment complex, and you have the pieces for a New York day that would make Woody Allen proud. The problem is, most of it is just too obvious and cloying to be truly satisfying, and it is only due to the strength of the performances things turn out half as well as they do.

As mentioned before, Close is spectacular, so good she might as well start thinking about Oscar night fashions now. Obviously, the other actors aren’t in her league, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do a good job. For me, the standouts include Marsden’s confused and closeted attorney and Eric Bogosian as a director whom looks after Diana like a caring older brother. Marsden, a long way from the “X-Men” series, shows range I heretofore didn’t know he had. A scene atop his apartment complex with Banks and Bradford is spellbinding, while a moment in the hallway just a few beats later hits the gut like a sledgehammer. Bogosian has far less to work with yet still manages to create an indelible impression, he and Close sharing an effortless chemistry that’s sublime.

If only what Terrio and Fox were saying was a bit more interesting or original. The pieces here fit like an over-worked jigsaw puzzle, the edges tattered and worn by too much use. Robert Altman, François Truffaut, Allen; each has mined the same territory time and time again far more succinctly and it is hard to imagine anyone else doing it better. These filmmakers certainly don’t, so many of the auxiliary tangents in the script misplaced and unimaginative. Isabel’s flirtations with an old flame, a NY Times reporter who might also have a high profile job for her, seems particularly forced, while the whole subplot revolving around Ian goes absolutely nowhere.

Yet, as a director Terrio is remarkably self-assured. He builds things exquisitely, the early moments bubbling over in intoxicating comedy before slowly dissolving tenderly and deftly into nerve-shattering melodrama. Superbly edited by Sloane Klevin (“Real Women Have Curves”) and astonishingly photographed by Jim Dunault (“Maria Full of Grace”), technically Terrio makes no wrong moves. Better, at just over 90-minutes the movie never drags, and even as silly and as overly coincidental as some of it gets things still remain oddly captivating.

Truth be told, much of that captivation is due solely to the breadth and brilliance of Close’s portrayal. While she isn’t at the center of “Heights,” she still remains very much its heart and soul. I can’t imagine the melodrama being all that interesting without her. With her, however, Terrio’s debut comes out a winner, even if, in the end, said victory is only a relatively minor one.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)