Hateship Loveship (2014)
*½/****
starring Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce, Hailee Steinfeld, Nick Nolte
screenplay by Mark Poirier, based on the short story by Alice Munro
directed by Liza Johnson
by Walter Chaw A knuckle-biting bounty of casting riches, Liza Johnson’s twee, somewhat over-directed, generally overdone Hateship Loveship features dozens of lovely actorly moments that add up to not a whole lot, although the movie tries. Boy, does it try. In its put-on listlessness, it wants to belong to the Matthew Porterfield/Nathan Silver school of contemplative indie flicks, but it’s not quiet enough nor patient enough in withholding its epiphanies and emotional rises and falls. It tends to narrate; it wants to tie up loose ends; and it’s not comfortable with entropy as much as it wants to be, what with its central character odd, awkward caregiver Johanna (Kristin Wiig) and its central setting a broken-down hotel, uninhabited but burdened with poor junkie Ken’s (Guy Pearce) dreams of restoration. It’s a big, clumsy metaphor for Ken trying to rebuild his life after killing his wife, McCauley’s (Nick Nolte) daughter and Sabitha’s (Hailee Steinfeld–thank God she’s getting work) mom, in a tragic speedboat accident. It all kind of sounds like a Wes Anderson sub-story. Anyway, Sabitha and her queen bitch bestie Edith (Sami Gayle) pen fake love letters from Ken to erstwhile nanny Johanna, leading to not the painful story we want, but a different painful story involving why you shouldn’t sway your camera back and forth when shooting dialogue exchanges and how poignant zooms don’t substitute for genuine feeling.