Book of Love
Rank
Bottom 40% of all time (see others with this rank)
Festival Year
2004 (click here to see all competition films from this year)
Category
Dramatic Competition
Cast
Frances O'Connor, Simon Baker, Gregory Smith, Bryce Dallas Howard
Non-Cast Credits
Alan Brown, Robert Ahrens, William Rexer II, Trevor Ristow, Kelly McGehee, Stewart Wallace
Description
If you miss the moody brilliance of a story told with stolen glance or a telling smile, Alan Browns Book of Love is for you. Setting his sights on the vulnerable heart of contemporary middle-class America, Brown unspools a seductive tale of the choices we make in daily life and the weight of their consequences.
Elaine (Frances OConnor) and David (Simon Baker) are on the verge of marital complacency, that state of submissive acceptance of who they are and how marriage is. Then they meet Chet (Gregory Smith), a 15-year-old employee at the local ice cream store who is full of youthful energy and hungry to live life to its fullest. An instant bond forms when Elaine and David welcome Clint into their lives as a surrogate child, But trouble arises when a momentary lapse of restraint threatens to rupture the core of the trios seemingly idyllic lines.
A year after having his short, 0 beautiful, in the Festival, Brown returns with a delicate story charged with emotion that refreshingly refrains from taking a moral stance. The depth of character development, shadowed by the ambiguity of blame, leaves the viewers sense of values shaken. OConnors portrayal vibrates with tangible feeling, while Baker undergoes an intricately matured, unraveling transformation. Book of Love will make you reflect on what is versus what should be, and the split-second decisions separating the two.
Reviewer
Trevor Groth (see other films reviewed by the same reviewer)