Moriarty's In Love With NURSE BETTY, And You Will Be, Too!!

Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some rumblings from the Lab.

You know, there are days when I really do feel like a cheerleader for certain companies or studios. The truth of the matter is, good decision making does tend to cluster. When a studio gets on a streak, it's like they're suddenly charmed. Right now, the most interesting young force in film production and releasing is USA Films. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, TOPSY TURVY, PITCH BLACK, JOE GOULD'S SECRET, RIDE WITH THE DEVIL, Michael Winterbottom's WONDERLAND... these are all films of merit, with MALKOVICH probably standing as the company's finest achievement to date. I like the fact that there is a real hunger on the part of this company to establish artistic and commercial credibility, and missteps like THE MUSE or WHERE THE MONEY IS are just hiccups, anomalies in an otherwise strong and adventurous slate.

First things first, go check this trailer out. It's a really nice indication of the general look and feel of Neil LaBute's NURSE BETTY, a comedic fable that's being released on September 15th. LaBute is, of course, the guy who brought us the jet-black cruelty comedies IN THE COMPANY OF MEN and YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS, both of which featured jaw-dropping moments of bleakness. As a result, I wasn't prepared for the dirty secret LaBute's been hiding this whole time...

The sonofabitch has a heart.

Admittedly, LaBute didn't write this film. No, the writers who shared the Best Screenplay honors at this year's Cannes festival are John C. Richards & James Flamburg, and it's a well-deserved bit of recognition for a script that takes potentially difficult material about a character who is traumatized to the point of a mental collapse and somehow weaves it into a shimmering, sweet, moving story about how we fall in love with the images of things rather than the reality of them.

At the heart of this film is a character that everything hinges upon. Either you will fall in love with Betty (Renee Zellweger) in the first five minutes she's onscreen, or you will not buy this film. It's that simple a case of chemistry. Personally, I can't imagine anyone who isn't drawn in, immediately stunned into submission by the intensity of the first shot of Betty Sizemore, her face framed in close-up, devoid of makeup. There's a splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose, her eyes more blue than they've ever seemed before, and there's a roundness to her face that seems more pronounced. She is piercingly adorable, and as we realize what it is that's got her attention, we begin piecing together who she is. She's watching her favorite soap opera, A REASON TO LOVE, as she works a shift at the local diner. She is taking care of various customers, including Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock), never looking away from the screen, but also never missing a beat. She's been doing this for a long time. It's Betty's birthday, and when her co-workers surprise her with a cupcake sporting a solitary candle and a cutout cardboard lifesize standup of Dr. David Ravell she is moved to tears, and so were people I saw the film with.

Remember... this is five minutes into a Neil LaBute film. Amazing.

As we get a look at the daily life that Betty leads, it's fairly obvious why she uses her soap opera addiction to escape a less than ideal life married to a local used-car salesman, Del, played to sleazy perfection by Aaron Eckhart, rapidly becoming one of the funniest chameleons in film. He's introduced buried balls-deep in his secretary Joyce (Sheila Kelley) and up to his neck in some shady deal involving a stolen car and some big clients from out of town. Betty, hoping to go out with a friend for her birthday, mistakenly takes the stolen car for the evening. It's never missed, though. Del brings his out-of-town clients to the house, thinking Betty's gone for the night. She's not, though. She's watching a tape of her soap and tries to keep the volume down so Del and his "business" aren't interrupted.

What follows is a shocking, truly unnerving bit of violence, the blackest moment in the film. I've had a few people tell me that they think this mars what is otherwise an almost ethereal little character comedy. Nonsense. This is a crucial turning point, because Betty witnesses the moment, and it's such a significant shock for her that she simply folds in on herself, building a mental wall around the image, forgetting it completely. It has to be this brutal, this ugly, to justify a reaction as extreme as Betty's. As Betty's fugue state settles in, she finds herself fixated on one particular line of dialogue from her soap, a line delivered by the always-serious Dr. Ravell: "I just know there's something out there for me... something really special." Betty decides to finally leave her small town, leave her safe life, and go find that special something and claim it as her own.

By the time Charlie and Wesley realize the car they came for is missing, they have lost Betty's trail completely. Charlie, the old pro of the two, is convinced that Betty is eluding them on purpose, that she's aware of the game she's in the middle of. He begins to study her, fixate on her, trying to establish any connection that will help him locate her. As he does, he begins to invent a Betty in his mind that he is drawn to, even driven a little mad by. His look may not be different than normal (Freeman's the only guy I know who can get away with wearing a cowboy hat in anything he does), but the performance is rich and textured and utterly convincing, one of the finest of his career, and I suspect there's a Supporting Actor nomination in his future. As he and Wesley bounce off each other, frustrated in their search for Betty, there's real sparks between them. This is the best Rock has been so far on film, and it's due in large part to the fact that most of his scenes are with Freeman. He seems more centered, more real than he ever has before.

There's that word... "real." It means something different for each of these characters at different moments in the film. Betty invents an entire fantasy relationship between herself and Dr. Ravell that she believes in completely. She has no idea who George McCord is, and when she encounters people who confront her with the truth, with anything that intrudes on this fantasy she's built, she simply doesn't hear them. Her defenses are that complete. The truly magical thing about the way Betty moves through the film is just how long she manages to go unscathed. She charms everyone she meets, even after they figure out just how disassociated from reality she is. She ends up staying with a woman (Tia Texada) whose life intersects with Betty's in a startling and bloody manner. She meets George McCord and the writers and producers of A REASON TO LOVE at a cocktail party and they all fall under her spell, not realizing just how serious she is about the show. McCord actually starts to fall in love with her because he thinks she's some incredible method actress. Things just seem to keep spinning Betty's way, and she moves through it all seemingly oblivious. But once again... this is a film about how deceptive surfaces can be, and no one is exactly what they seem here. By showing us the faces people wear and then stripping them away, time and time again, the film makes its points in a variety of ways, never once laying the full metaphorical weight on Betty's shoulders.

But it's not the plot that makes this film great, as clever and as well-written as it is. It's the performances and the living, beating heart of the thing. Zellweger is a movie star of the highest order here, engaging from the first frame to the last. Freeman and Rock are great. Supporting characters played by actors like Crispin Glover and Pruitt Taylor Vince come to life in just a few scenes because of the confidence and quirk everyone brings to the table. The score by Rolfe Kent is memorably and infectious, providing perfect tonal support to this very tricky piece. The cinematography by Jean Yves Escoffier, who's done great work in films like GOOD WILL HUNTING, CRADLE WILL ROCK, and GRACE OF MY HEART, is somehow cartoonish but honest. The colors seem to leap off the screen, too bright and vivid to be mistaken for life, but the faces we see are all shot to make them real, rob them of the perfect sheen the movie screen can lend. We see imperfections, flaws, but they transform these characters into people that we know intimately by the end of the movie. LaBute has proven now that he is as strong a visual director as he is a verbal one, a leap forward that's comparable to the one David O. Russell made with THREE KINGS. As in his earlier work, he has a remarkable way with actors, and their trust in him is rewarded over and over in this film. Somehow, he manages to make this occasionally violent and dark story into something that just radiates sweetness and sunshine, and if you are able to walk out of a theater after seeing this, one of my very favorite films so far this year, without a grin splitting your face from ear to ear, then maybe you could stand a vacation from whatever it is that's made you too cynical to believe in love and change and the endless possibilities of life.

"Moriarty" out.