AND WHILE WE WERE
HERE C
USA (83 mi) 2012
d: Kat Coiro
Apparently this film
went through several transformations, as many of the reviews indicate the film
was originally screened at Tribeca in Black and White, but was later released in
vivid color. Written and directed by Kat
Coiro, this is what is commonly called a woman’s picture, where the
disintegration of a marriage unravels in the picturesque location of Naples in
Italy, all seen through the eyes of the wife Jane (Kate Bosworth), who spends
her time listening to audio tapes she made interviewing her British grandmother
(the voice of Claire Bloom) before she died, listening to her talk about how
she survived two world wars. In this
manner, she completely avoids her husband Leonard (Iddo Goldberg), a studious
introvert who professionally plays the viola for an orchestra that is spending
two weeks touring in Naples. Fortunately, this leaves him
conveniently out of the picture for most of the film, where they only see one
another in passing, often wordlessly, like ships passing in the night. This leaves Jane plenty of free time, which
she spends sightseeing. If this reminds
you of another film, it bears a great similarity to Rossellini’s Journey
to Italy (1954) about another bored couple,
Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, with their marriage similarly on the
rocks. While they unfold differently, Rossellini provides a historical travelogue of the Italian cities of Naples,
Capri, and Pompeii while also accentuating the spaces that exist between
couples, but both films provide a virtual no man’s zone where neither care to
venture, leaving instead a cavernous emptiness of unspoken thoughts. While this appears to be a studied
examination of the nuances of marriage, unlike Bergman’s magnificent effort, none
of the performances show even the slightest degree of nuance, where the biggest
letdown is the utter lack of chemistry between characters, where none of them
can act a whit.
While Jane is
attempting to write a book about her grandmother, she hasn’t figured out yet
how to present the material, how to see the war from an entirely new vantage
point, so she goes on long sightseeing walks, eventually taking a ferry to
nearby Ischia island, one of many islands in the Gulf of
Naples. The on site locations are
superb, as Jane runs into a young 19-year old American, Caleb (Jamie Blackley),
who immediately starts paying Jane the kind of attention that the more dispassionate
Leonard is simply incapable of providing.
The youthful Caleb is much more fun and playful, but there’s more than a
decade’s worth of difference between them, and Caleb is still just a kid. Still, all attempts to find passion in her
marriage is met with resistance, as Leonard simply avoids the subject by drowning
himself in his work. While they remain
overly polite, what sex they have is dreadfully dull and boring, especially
when there’s a young prospective lover waiting impatiently in the wings. Jane decides to take the plunge, turning this
into a fairly stereotypical midlife crisis, where the cloistered and heavily
repressed middle aged wife suddenly lets her hair down (literally), where the
director fills the screen with a montage of idyllic sunsets over the beach,
wine drenched romantic meals overlooking the glistening bay, pictures of the
lovers embraced, waking up in each other’s arms by morning, and then conveniently
arriving back at her hotel just as her husband is leaving for work.
When Jane insists
they need to talk, Leonard politely avoids all confrontation, but she asserts
he’s lost all curiosity about her and no longer “sees” her anymore, as if she’s
become the invisible woman. What we do
learn, however, is that they’re both traumatized after losing a baby, as
neither has fully recovered afterwards, where despite the love that remains,
the intimacy has simply disappeared. The
film never really takes the husband’s concerns seriously, as all efforts to
communicate are doomed from the cold and sterile opening images. In stark contrast, it’s a sunny and picturesque,
yet somewhat over-romanticized affair in Italy, where typically if it’s a man
having the affair he’s considered contemptible, while if it’s a woman, it
supposedly opens the doors to an entirely new world. Despite dominating the screen time and
receiving the upper hand in nearly every verbal encounter, the film interestingly
withholds sympathy for Jane throughout, as even though the affair feels badly
needed, one never takes it too seriously.
Any offerings of hope, however, get a dose of cold water at the end, as
over the end credits Jennifer Warnes rapturously sings Leonard Cohen’s perpetually
downbeat “Famous Blue Raincoat” JENNIFER WARNES ~ Famous Blue
Raincoat ~ - YouTube (5:34).
