TIFF ’04: Sideways

***/****
starring Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh
screenplay by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor, based on the novel by Rex Pickett
directed by Alexander Payne

by Bill Chambers Alexander Payne has a gift for wry humour, of course, and in Sideways, there's a nice, sardonic hold on a bathroom door's sign–"MEN"–after Jack (Thomas Haden Church), having learned nothing from a sour indiscretion that netted him a broken nose, starts hitting on a waitress. By the same token, the curlicue noted above is typical of the level of organization, for lack of a better word, in Payne's work, which always seems a tad elementary in retrospect. Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, and now Sideways are each so auto-critical that they leave next to no room for either interpretation or improvement…and leave almost nothing like a lasting impression. Still, they sure are firecrackers in the moment, with Sideways, Payne's most emotionally intelligent film to date, being no exception. Lamenting a generation of overgrown children, this companion piece of sorts to the identically-structured About Schmidt follows depressed wine connoisseur Miles (Paul Giamatti) as he takes impulsive Jack on a tour of California's vineyards just before Jack is due to be married. Giamatti, though typecast as a self-loathing bachelor who's reached a career impasse (see: Storytelling and American Splendor), at last has a role that doesn't hermetically seal him off from his co-stars, but it's Church and especially Virginia Madsen, playing a waitress finally ready to embrace adulthood, who are the true discoveries of the piece–as well as pretty much all that you see in the rear-view when giving Sideways a backwards glance. Programme: Special Presentations