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REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP
Our rating: 2 out of 5 Because of: sexual content & dialogue, language Rated:
The potential for comedies revolving around therapists is unlimited. The director-writer actually came up with this idea while dating. Knowing his girlfriend was seeing a therapist, he wondered what might happen if she unintentionally was his mother's patient. The result is a touching but morally askew film about how people are there for each other "at certain times of their lives."
Forty-seven years old and having just been through an emotionally devastating divorce, Rafi Gardet (Uma Thurman) is attempting a new approach to life. It's been so long since she played the dating game that she is a little shy of the whole thing, and confesses as much to her therapist Lisa Metzger (Meryl Streep). While out with her friends one evening, she runs into David Bloomberg (Bryan Greenberg), a charming younger man also unimpressed with his dating efforts. Working up his nerve to call her a few days later, the two have a date and immediately hit it off. The only thing making Rafi nervous is the fact that he's so much younger. Barely old enough to drink, he doesn't have a problem with a much older woman, and her therapist doesn't see a problem with it either. It's not meant to go anywhere, it's just a relationship to help ease her into the dating game.
Ultimately the film draws a conclusion that not all relationships that don't head toward commitment and marriage are bad. Sometimes two people just need one another, as a kind of "romantic therapy." Obviously, there are many issues to be taken with this point of view, because at the root is selfishness. Neither one hoped it would lead to marriage and a family, but they pursued it because it's what they wanted, and managed to create a lot of stress for everyone else involved in the meantime. Plus, most of the relationship is based on sex. The film explores this, with numerous scenes of them kissing passionately, moving around on top of each other, and moaning. There's a lot of sexual dialogue too risqué to more than allude to, but Rafi thoroughly embarrasses Lisa when describing their sexual encounters. One of Rafi's friends is blatantly gay. There's also a hearty amount of language, the worse being a half dozen abuses of Jesus' name.
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PRIME
That's
when the bombshell drops. Lisa discovers that it's her
twenty-something son dating her patient, and while attempting to determine
what moral obligation she has to Rafi, she also knows that she doesn't
want her Jewish son making long-term plans with a woman that is all wrong
for him. The result is two hours of ensuing chaos and hilarity at whose
core is very real questions about morality and common standards. Rafi is
amazed at David's "innocence," just as he is fascinated with her
"experience," but the age gap is made profoundly obvious. David
is still playing Nintendo at a time when Rafi has been in the working
field for fifteen years.
Lisa
is a practicing Jew, and it bothers her very much that Rafi comes from a
"Christian" (non-Jewish) background. One of David's one night
stands asks him if he believes in Jesus. The one positive aspect in the
film is the eventual honesty of everyone involved. Most of them start out disguising
the truth but it comes out and forces them to deal with the issues it
raises. When David wants to give Rafi a baby, knowing that's what she
wants most in life, she unselfishly takes responsibility and declines,
knowing how it would forever impact his life. I understood the film and
could even connect with it, but at the same time I did not like its
message that romance, and sex, should be something non-serious and therapeutic
rather than evidence of a serious commitment.