P.S.
**½/****
starring Laura Linney, Topher Grace, Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden
screenplay by Helen Schulman and Dylan Kidd, based on the novel by Helen Schulman
directed by Dylan Kidd
by Bill Chambers Curious that Dylan Kidd, the mind behind the revelatory Roger Dodger, felt compelled to include a "director's statement" in the pressbook for his sophomore feature, p.s., but it's nonetheless an essential read in that it gives the lie to artist intentionality. "From Aristotle to Joseph Campbell to Robert McKee," Kidd writes, "everyone's in agreement: you can't have drama without obstacles…The idea behind p.s. was to tell a story where nothing stands between the heroine and her love object. Even more: in this story, the universe works with the heroine, dumping the love object on her doorstep time after time! Is it possible that the only obstacle this heroine needs to overcome is herself?" It's Murphy's Law, perhaps, that p.s. not only doesn't reinvent the wheel, but also orchestrates a veritable gauntlet for the heroine in question to run through. Louise Harrington (Laura Linney, appropriately described in the film as blindingly beautiful) is an admissions officer with the graduate fine arts program at Columbia University who one day happens upon an unprocessed application from someone with the same name–Scott Feinstadt–as her late high-school sweetheart. When Scott (Topher Grace, he of the Swiss-watch comic timing), actually "F. Scott," shows up for his interview, he's so much the reincarnation of her dead lover that she takes him back to her place for the most cathartic screw of her life. ("That was fucking awesome!" Scott exclaims–and so it seems.) But although their attraction is mutual and enduring, Louise is a couple of decades Scott's senior. She's behaving unprofessionally; he shouldn't be doing anything to jeopardize his chances of getting into Columbia. She's got a horny friend (Marcia Gay Harden) coveting F. Scott because she, too, dated the prototype; he's a young man sowing his wild oats. And so on and so forth. The romantic conflicts are, in other words, inexhaustible, as well as nearly unavoidable–they'd foil better filmmakers than Kidd. I wish there were more scenes like the one in which F. Scott tells Louise that she needs to move on from teen angst and she asks him if he "moves on" when he's stuck on a piece, because Kidd excels at (or maybe, just maybe, he burns himself out on) these heart-to-hearts between a master and pupil of the same emotional age. Whenever Linney and Grace are apart, the movie is like a detuned radio. (Additional points shaved off for casting the stars of Miller's Crossing (Harden and Gabriel Byrne) and not reuniting them on screen.) Unless I'm mistaken, that's Kidd posing for a couple of the paintings in F. Scott's portfolio–which for once are as good as the characters pretend. Programme: Special Presentations
