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World Traveler
review by Carrie Gorringe, 21 September
2001 26th
Toronto International Film Festival
The theme of Bart Freundlich's
latest film, World Traveller, can be summed up in one phrase:
mid-life crisis. Traveller's hero, however, has decided to
take his much earlier than expected, and it unfolds in the most
conventional way. Cal (Billy Crudup) is a successful New York
architect in his mid-thirties, caught up in what might be described
as the "Better Deal" Syndrome; he's convinced that there
has to be one if he can just jettison those nagging professional and
personal commitments. So Cal packs a bag and drives off in search of
whatever it is he's been lacking, leaving his wife and
three-year-old son to fend for themselves. While making his way
across the country, supporting himself through odd construction
jobs, he encounters one of those archetypical mysterious women
(Julianne Moore), one who is at once vibrant and a bitter alcoholic,
who inadvertently makes him realize the meaning of life and the
quality of life in one single, dreadful instant. Although the film
is ostensibly about Cal, and Billy Crudup provides the character
with just enough humanity to keep him from becoming a yuppie cad ,
Moore's character is the fulcrum of the piece; without her, the film
would be yet another mundane take on the man's fear-of acceptance
archetype, and Freundlich is smart enough to know that. Moore is one
of those rare actresses who can encapsulate an entire lifetime of
misery in the most deceptively simple, or even simplistic, gesture,
as in her powerful performance as the trophy wife in Todd Haynes's Safe
(especially during a scene in which the wife's explosion over the
delivery of a sofa that is the wrong color is more than a mere
expression of repressed anger. Moore turns it into a cruel statement
about a woman who is prized for her extrinsic value, as opposed to
her intrinsic values; this mere delivery error represented nothing
less than yet another act of cosmic betrayal, and becomes a
pathetic, but apt, harbinger of her increasing imprisonment on all
levels). Because of her, the film's tone receives a well-needed
reinforcement at around the time that the film settles into a
(reasonably) predictable, though easy-flowing, narrative.
Structurally, World Traveler hits the basic benchmark for
quality common to all life-crisis film; thanks to Ms. Moore, it
becomes something else: a piquant statement on the nature of human
neediness and its relationship to human responsibilities.
Click on the titles below to read the reviews.
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Written and
Directed by:
Bart Freundlich
Starring:
Julianne Moore
Billy Crudup
Karen Allen
Liane Balaban
James LeGros
Rated:
NR - Not Rated.
This film has not
yet been rated.
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