SFGate: 'Welcome to the Rileys' Review

By | Published Wednesday, November 24, 2010


Drama. Starring James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart and Melissa Leo. Directed by Jake Scott. (R. 105 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)


Photobucket

Young people picture middle age as something out of "Welcome to the Rileys," where people smoke and play cards and eat waffles (even though they're already enormous) and wake up in the middle of the night, staring off into the existential abyss - or sobbing.






There are many things to admire about this movie, but the main one is that it doesn't compromise.

It tells a story of a couple mired in gloom, and so the atmosphere is gloomy and the pace is measured. There are no easy solutions, but there is a sort of break in the clouds.
James Gandolfini is a small-businessman in Indiana, living in some kind of frozen-limbo-dead marriage to Melissa Leo. And then one day, while at a convention in New Orleans, he meets a 16-year-old stripper/prostitute (Kristen Stewart) and takes a genuine and fatherly interest in her life and well-being.

New Orleans makes the perfect setting - once known as a party city, now known as a disaster area. The resonances couldn't be more appropriate. Stewart is a mess in this movie - no compromise on that end, either. Her hair is unwashed, and her face is perpetually in the midst of some bad skin outbreak.

Only someone as messed up and down on himself as this Indiana businessman could ever be expected to look at her with no judgment and no sense of moral superiority. That, in a sentence, is the beauty of this movie.He's big and fat, she's little and skinny. She's ridiculously young, and he feels as if he's a hundred.

But there's something going on here, a spiritual connection, not sexual but paternal and filial - a connection taking place at the last possible moment this girl might still be reached. Might. Again, no compromises.Gandolfini plays tough guys, but he's an actor of gracefulness and refinement, with lots going on in the silences.

And it's a pleasure to see Stewart ("Twilight") not trying to navigate sex with a vampire or a werewolf, but as a young actress, impressive with her quirky timing, unexpected line readings and expressive eyes. She doesn't go in for sentiment - at all.
Actually no one does here, which means this is director Jake Scott's doing, too, and he deserves the credit.

-- Advisory: Sexual situations, strong language, drug use.

Posted in , , . Bookmark the permalink. RSS feed for this post.

Leave a Reply

Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate <3

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Search

Swedish Greys - a WordPress theme from Nordic Themepark. Converted by LiteThemes.com.