Review: Transference: A Love Story

 

Some movies are good, some are bad, a whole bunch are somewhere in the middle. Then there are those films you watch and someone asks you afterward, "What's it about?", and you honestly don't know how to answer.

"Transference: A Love Story," is helpful enough to give us a big clue right in the title. It is indeed a romance about two nurses working in a London palliative care hospital, both of them immigrants: Katerina (Emilie Sofie Johannese) from Norway and Nik (Raffaello Degruttola). They have a torrid affair, then things go shaky, then splitsville, then... well, you'll see.

Really, what the movie is about is lots of leisurely shots of the stars looking forlorn, often against a cityscape backdrop, possibly with some odd narration by Katerina that somehow uses physics and other scientific principles to comment upon their relationship. 

It's weird. It doesn't work. Even slightly. IMDb.com lists its running time as 90 minutes, but the version I watched was closer to two hours. It should be an18-minute short film. Certainly you could communicate everything meaningful in the story in that amount of time.

Nik and Katerina do not seem like a good fit. Everyone tells them so, from her roommate, Camilla (Pernille Broch), to their workmates to... anyone with eyes. 

She is 25; he seems close to double that. She is fetching, with long, dark hair and mysterious eyes; he looks like the guy who serves you soup. Katerina has animated facial expressions and seems full of inner turmoil; Nik barely hasn't any animation in his face at all. He's closer to scary than smoldering.

I do not know if Degruttola is a terrible actor or if this was a deliberate choice he made. Probably the latter. He is also the writer/director of the film, and the press notes highlight the fact the story is inspired by his own complicated, real-life relationship with his father, who struggled with bipolar disorder his whole life.

The movie takes until about the halfway point to suggest outright that Nik may have mental health issues. Katerina is the one who comes on to him, which he initially resists since they work in the same place. Soon they plunge full into a passionate (though coyly scanty on skin) affair, including rendezvous at the hospital where people are literally dying in the next room, which is just... ick.

Later on we meet Marieka (Lotte Verbeek), who is Nik's ex. He wants to share news of his new relationship with her, almost as if asking her permission, and she has her own news to relate. A few other characters flit in and out of the background without much impact: another Italian coworker (Iggy Blanco), much younger and better-looking than Nik; the supervising nurse (Bea Watson), who appears even younger than Katerina and is astonishingly clueless about their affair.

Not a lot happens in this movie, and when they do events don't seem to fit with the rest of the story. Nik has an encounter in a bar that turns violent for reasons no one, including him, can figure out. And then, more staring off into space while the music plays. 

So... much... staring...

I still scratch my head thinking about "Transference." It's supposed to be a love story but it's more about mental health challenges. Really, it's about how hard it can be to love someone struggling with a mental health diagnosis. Watching this movie doesn't help anyone.

Review: "The Fault in Our Stars"

"The Fault in Our Stars" is an exhausting movie. And I mean that in a good way.

It's been awhile since a film left me so emotionally wrung out. This tender-yet-sharp drama about two teenagers with terminal cancer falling in love, based on the best-selling YA book by John Green, promises to be the no-BS version of tragic young romance. And, mostly, it is.

"This is the truth. Sorry," introduces/apologizes our heroine, Hazel Grace (a remarkable Shailene Woodley).

Hazel, 17, had thyroid cancer which has spread to her lungs, forcing her to constantly breathe with the aid of an oxygen tank and counting her dwindling days on this mortal coil. Smart and realistic, she attends a church support group for young cancer patients, mostly to appease her loving but slightly smothering parents (Laura Dern and Sam Trammell).

There she meets Augustus Waters, an exuberant character exuberantly played by Ansel Elgort. A former cancer patient himself -- his right leg is prosthetic, rendering him a cyborg, he boasts -- he's mostly there to support his best friend, Isaac (Nat Wolff), who sacrificed one eye to the disease and is in danger of losing the other.

Augustus is a braggart and a charmer, the sort of fellow who coasts through life buoyed by his own outsized expectations for himself, telling the group he fully expects to live "an extraordinary life." But it's the retiring Hazel he can't keep his eyes off of, and soon the pair have struck up a deep friendship that dances right up to the line of love in full bloom.

The chemistry between Woodley and Elgort is terrific, with her the wary, inner-directed girl obsessed with damaging as few other lives before she dies, and he the world-conquering hero who knows not fear or hesitation.

Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who wrote the terrific "(500) Days of Summer," don't go in for a lot of storytelling tricks to endear the couple to the audience. Rather, they focus on building the connection between Hazel and Augustus, and through them we are drawn in.

Director Josh Boone mostly stays out of the way, eliciting strong performances from his cast while remaining as true to the book's tone as possible. (It's unread by me, but from what I've gathered it appears to be an extremely faithful adaptation.)

Soon after meeting, Hazel and Augusts each invite the other to read their favorite book. His is the novelization of a video game ("Counterinsurgence 2"), showing that Augustus is bright if not worldly. Hazel gives him "An Imperial Affliction," the tale of a girl who dies of cancer, written by a mysterious author named Peter Van Houten who has decamped to Amsterdam, eschewing his fans and promising never to write another word.

Later, Hazel and Augustus will get a chance to travel to the Netherlands to meet him, a trip filled with magic and discovery, except for the actual part where they meet their beloved author (Willem Dafoe).

(Here's a pro tip on the interpersonal skills of writers: Expect to be disappointed.)

The film is set in Indianapolis (Green was born and lives here), though it was shot in and around Pittsburgh. (Darn those miserly Indiana film tax incentives!) If you look hard one can spot a few cues in the background, most notably a picnic scene at the "Funky Bones" outdoor art exhibit at the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 100 Acres. Augustus also rocks a Rik Smits jersey at one point.

"The Fault in Our Stars" is ultimately a life-affirming film, if one that favors sour realities over saccharine fantasies. "I don't want this particular life," Hazel admits. This movie is not afraid to show the bottom of being 17 and knowing you are soon to die, and that's pretty low. But the view from there is still uplifting.