Wicker Park

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
6/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
7/10

Year made: 2004
Runtime: 114 minutes
IMDB page: here

Quite a tragic love story. I usually don't go for the romantic movie, but this movie is almost unromantic. It's a thriller, it's a mystery, it's psychological, it's obsessive. It's kind of Shakespeare rehashed. Themes from Twelfth Night peek through the sometimes chaotic (in a good, metaphoric way) narrative.

It's also another American remake. Haven't seen the famous French original L'appartement yet. Will do so soon in the future.

I also don't usually like heartthrobs, but something about Josh Hartnett (playing the protagonist Matt) is simply beyond heartthrobs. Diane Kruger, the German model/actress playing Lisa, Matt's lost love, is also slightly beyond your usual pretty girl. She is also the ex-wife of the young and talented and handsome director/screenwriter/actor of Tell No One.

Basic plot: Matt, a young man rising in his career of advertising, catches a glimpse of Lisa in a restaurant. Lisa is his long-lost dancer lover who disappeared out of his life without a word 2 years before. Matt begins an obsessive search for Lisa, going into her hotel room and her apartment, where he meets "Lisa", a completely different girl whom he had apparently mistaken for his Lisa back at the restaurant. But the real Lisa is indeed in town. How are the Lisas related, and what exactly is "Lisa" hiding? Meanwhile, Matt's good friend Luke is dating a moody theater actress named Alex who seems awfully interested in Matt and Lisa's story. How does she figure into the plot?

No one is murdered, no one is badly injured physically, there's barely any blood in the film, yet it's still an intriguing mystery. I'm a bit surprised at how much I liked it, given it's about love at first sight and all this crap I don't really believe in.

The acting is... eh, believable. Special props should be given to "Lisa," played by Rose Byrne, who has the most depth and versatility in the cast. She's one of the reasons I liked this movie, she and her character.

The way the movie is put together is reflective of the confusion people suffer while in love. The sequences of scenes are quite creative. Everything is a bit jumbled, and things are peeled back from different angles to slowly reveal the whole story, kind of Memento-style. What you see, what you think happened depending on what you heard, can be so different from what really happened.

And man, the soundtrack is pretty awesome. Mostly just mid-tempo ballads, moody yet yearning, in a subdued, confused way, like Matt. He knows there's something out there, he trusts Lisa wouldn't just leave him, yet that is what seems to have happened. But he knows there's an answer.

***************Spoilers Alert*******************


I try hard to avoid spoilers now because ... well, not everyone wants to read spoilers and I want to maximize my readership. But there are some things in this film that can only be discussed with spoilers.

Like who "Lisa" really is.

Yes, "Lisa" is Alex the actress. She fell in love with Matt way before Matt set eyes on Lisa and fell in love with her. She's Lisa's neighbour and a kind of confidant. But all she could do was watch silently as Matt went after the pretty girl, the dancer, and the two fell madly in love with each other. It's oh-so-unfair, but... what could she do. Until Lisa had to leave immediately for Europe for a dance gig and left her with a letter for Matt. Matt had asked Lisa to move in with him, Lisa got super excited but was too nervous to say yes and now she had to get on a plane for Europe before they meet again. So she explained everything in a letter and said yes to his request. Alex did not pass on the letter. She also told Lisa that she found Matt in bed with another woman when she tried to pass on the letter. She broke them up.

Now she's panicking that they might find everything out and she'll lose a friend AND any chance she might have with Matt, so she tries her best to keep the two from ever knowing the other person is in town. She does an excellent job to explain away the little details that Matt found suspicious. She's such a convincing actress, it's heart-breaking.

Ironically, she is playing the role of Viola in a modern version of Twelfth Night at her theater job. The make-up she wore was painfully fabulous, a mask that helps her keep Matt from knowing "Lisa" is Alex. I sympathize greatly with her suffering to be the intermediary between the man she loves and the woman he loves, to be the unwanted middlewoman, to have both their trusts and try to keep them apart. You have to understand that Alex is not an evil, contriving woman. She's just caught in her unrequited love. She made all the wrong choices under impulse and by the time she truly realized what she was doing, it was too late and too much to fix anything.

Well, in love it is never too late.