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Grant Moxham

Review: "Winter Passing"

Winter passing is a busy modern drama sporting an intriguing cast and peppered with an appropriate while typical soundtrack (thank you WB and Hummer commercials). Adam Rapp, also partially responsible for televisions the L word, takes his first crack at the movie industry here as both writer and director. The film is a dramatic beuleobase centered and expanding on love, but it is subtle in its complications leaving plenty of room for abstraction, and ultimately successful in winning my empathy.

Zooey Deschanel is brilliant as Reese Holdin, daughter of two literary giants with whom she has not spoken with in nearly seven years. She is persuaded to leave NYC, where she has been living autonomously and anonymously as an actor, with the promise of a small fortune if she can dig up her parents loveletters during their courtship for publication. Reese goes home where her mother has been dead for six months to find strangers in her house and a father whom is merely a shadow of his former self.

Ed Harris does well as Don, certainly based upon salenger(the last name is the give-away), a rickety drunk living reclusively in the backyard. Amelia Warner plays Shelley, a beautiful and caring person who characterizes mother, struggle, and sweetness under scrutiny. Ferrels character Corbit serves to compliment Shelley as a handy father figure of sorts. The two are undivided in their love and support of Don who is drunk first thing in the morning. The guts of the movie revolve around Reeses introduction into the household and the reflecting changes inside all.

Deschanel is the filet of the film. She's an agile fateless youth from a lost generation hardened by the pressure of foster greatness. She personifies the potential pain of doing our own thing in the midst of the obvious talent of another, and frequently reminds herself by slamming her hand in a drawer just to feel something. Her experience of love in the world has left her apathetic and strung-out, but the truth of reciprocal love is in her allowing reconciliation.

Ferrel's character is a tricky one. Corbit is an introverted guitarist from the Christian rock band 'punching pilot.' he is mostly responsible for any of the humor in the movie, which is all visual comedy if nothing else. Of all the characters, his was the most disappointing. Still, Farrel may yet prove himself as a dramatic actor, assuming we all forget about Elf.

Music undeniably steers the emotion in the movie. There is hardly a scene without a track. Cat Power, My Morning Jacket, and Low are among the musical cast which pleased me to no end. All in all I applaud Rapp for his first movie and stand in anticipation of his next.