an alternate world
by Douglas
Messerli
Willard Carroll
(screenwriter and director) Playing by Heart / 1998
Director Willard Carroll’s Playing by Heart might easily be described as the alternate universe of Todd Solondz’ Happiness. Instead of the inability to demonstrate a morally responsible love and experiencing a life of despair, of loneliness and failure, Carroll’s version of Chekov’s Three Sisters is a romantic fantasy of love’s possibilities and the utter success of nearly everyone in the film to achieve an almost fairy-tale-like relationship.
If at first the story of the sisters
appears to be dour, by the time the movie is finished, all have struggled
through the thicket of despair and confusion to discover their desires. There
is Gracie (Madeleine Stowe) married to Hugh (Dennis Quaid), whose marriage
inexplicably has lost it’s meaning for her, mostly because she is convinced
that Hugh has utterly no imagination; but it appears to be Gracie who has lost
the ability to cry—the emotion she evokes when she is truly happy—and she has
taken on a lover, Roger (Anthony Edwards), a liberal-minded minister (we are
never told of what denomination) who ultimately discovers that he is still in
love with his wife and children.
Hugh goes on to tell an old story with a “newish
twist” about how he, a married man, has fallen in love with Sam, his wife’s
younger brother. And after what appears to be a long story—we only get bits and
pieces—Lana, a character who is well-schooled in fantasy, responds: “Can I tell
you something…I’ve had a great time with you darlin’, right entertaining it
was. But sweetie, who the fuck to you think you’re kiddin’? …Lana may be three
sheets to the proverbial wind, but I don’t believe a word out of your pretty
straight-assed mouth.”
In one of the most moving of the many scenarios Carroll takes us through is about Meredith’s former husband, Mark, now dying of AIDS, whose lover died previously, apparently living in New York City. He is visited by his loving mother Mildred (a role beautifully performed by one of the best and underrated actors in Hollywood, Ellen Burstyn). Together they reveal a great many secrets that neither knew about one another, the first being obviously something Mildred has had to come to terms with before her travels from California to see her son, that he is gay and been in a marriage-like relationship with another man. She, in turn, reveals that she never loved her husband, the marriage forced upon her like so many of her age, by expectations and motherly encouragement. The husband, ironically, was an undertaker. Together they forge a new relationship neither son nor mother might have imagined in the past before Mark dies in the last third of the film.
The third sister, Joan (Angelina Jolie),
the youngest, is a regular club-attendee of the Mayan Theatre in downtown Los
Angeles. In great public display, she is breaking up with her current
boyfriend, as they argue over the pay phone upon who gets what of the pieces of
their past life. It is at the Mayan that she also meets pretty boy Keenan (Ryan
Phillippe), who becomes clearly fascinated by her endless takes on the world
around her, but resists even dating, finally showing up to a movie where she
has told him she’d be attending. But even after that evening together, he still
keeps his distance, she finally coming to recognize that there seems to be no
possible way to break down the barriers he has built against all friends, until
he finally admits that his previous lover has had sex with others who shared
needles, thus leaving him with one final gift, AIDS.
Even
if they can’t have sex (the first drug that stopped HIV, AZT was developed in
the 1980s, but tests took longer and, the drug was not readily available until
the 1990s, also causing severe side-effects such as severe intestinal problems,
damage to the immune system, nausea, vomiting and headaches; by 1998 other
medicines were being developed, but this film seems to have been
In her relentless love of Keenan, however,
Joan finally gets her man to hug and hold, if nothing else.
The director tells all of these stories in
short scenarios, broken up into small segments—a method director Robert Altman
has previously explored, although far more experimentally. The publicists for Playing by Heart even
refused critics of the day be allowed to piece these scenarios together in their
reviews, as I just have, let alone reveal the final scenes wherein they almost
all come together to celebrate the 40th wedding anniversary, a remarriage
ceremony, between the sisters’ parents Hannah (Gena Rowlands), who performs as
TV chef, and Paul (Sean Connery), the latter of whom has also just been
diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Yet, they too express distress, in
this case over a long ago love affair (sans sex) between Paul and one of
Hannah’s assistants. Paul keeps a picture of her, in fact, to remind him that
he too could be loved again, but also that his true love is still Hannah.
By the time of the final celebration, nearly
all seem to have found new love and possibilities in their relationships, even
Gracie discovering via young Keenan’s admiration of a web game Hugh has
created, just how clever her husband is. And in that statement, we now discover
his daily employment.
If these figures are meant to represent
“real figures,” however, we quickly perceive most of them as romantic stick
figures, but the mostly excellent acting, the clever dialogue, the beautiful
landscapes created by noted cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and the music by
John Barry, all help us settle into this work as we might a good soap opera or
a slick Hollywood rom-com.
Indeed, these very qualities led Roger
Ebert, who so loved Solondz’ Happiness, to declare thumbs down to this film.
Ebert took issue with the picture-book
quality of this film, even the articulate dialogue, and easy pleasing choices
the director argues for as the characters attempt to rectify their lives’
failures. Ebert wrote:
“It’s easy to
like the movie because we like the actors in it, and because the movie makes it
easy on us and has charming moments. But it feels too much like an exercise.
It’s yuppie lite–affluent, articulate people who, except for those who are ill,
have problems that are almost pleasant. It has been observed that a lot of
recent movies about death have gone all soft and gooey at the center. Here’s a
movie about life that does the same thing.”
The critics from Variety and The New York Times basically
argued similar points of view.
It is certainly true that some figures,
particularly Gracie and Hugh—except for Hugh’s (Quaid’s) signature pieces—seem
flat and uninteresting; there comes a moment when I wanted Hugh to simply get
up and leave a wife who sought out the arms of the bland minister Roger, who
also officiates over Hannah and Paul’s restatement of their wedding vows.
And, although they are both fairly
interesting, it takes a lot of energy to imagine why Trent continues to woo the
sour faced Meredith. He’s handsome, and apparently rich; but what but an angry
face does she truly offer him?
The rest of the cast, however, is so good
that even if the story Carroll is telling is wrapped up as if it were a
cellophane-covered box of chocolate truffles, I’ll eat and enjoy. And
perceiving this work as an alternate to Solondz’ movie—yes, a far superior and
challenging film—is, I believe, a fascinating way to perceive Carroll’s work,
something that Ebert and others never seemingly even imagined probing.
I have to admit, I have owned and watched
Carroll’s work for years, and every time the truffles call out to me: eat until
you’ve satisfied your appetite, which I joyfully do.
Los
Angeles, June 11, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(June 2025).
