During a car accident, Vincent Eastman watches his whole life flash before his eyes, and he doesn't like what he sees. While maintaining the semblance of a marriage with his wife, Sally, Vincent has been carrying on with a mistress, Olivia. She's everything Sally isn't -- warm, passionate, carefree. So why can't he choose between the two, especially when his indecision is taking its toll on his daughter?
24 Jan Intersection (1994)
West Coast Architecture
I admit to a weakness for any film that attempts to be architectural in some fundamental way. Even the failures — and they are mostly failures — are usually interesting. And this one features a redhead as well, a cinematic device that is similarly architectural in some ways. But that is another story.
One of the small number (23?) of plots is: man makes — literally creates — his own world and it turns on him. He usually wins except in “adult” films where he doesn’t. In this case, the creative medium is architectural.
I’m not usually a fan of Gere, but I have to appreciate the way he moves. He is a dancer and the relationship he has to space is apt. The backdrop is rather ordinary: he is an architect we are told but the architecture shown is underwhelmingly faddish. But there is a nice touch in that the museum is for the Potlatch culture where the space of one is designed by the other side.
A particularly apt architectural metaphor for the conflict depicted here, and the gifts exchanged at the end.
Posted in 2004
Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
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