Sunday 21 April 2013

The Heartbreak Kid (1972 Elaine May)

For a Neil Simon comedy, the next film is strangely lacking in laughs.

Charles Grodin hastily marries Jeannie Berlin and quickly regrets it as she is the most annoying woman in the world (Q. found her egg salad eating scene "disgusting", though that's perhaps what triggered my hard boiled egg breakfast the next morning). On the honeymoon he meets a gorgeous Cybill Shepherd on an empty beach ("You're lying in my spot") in one of two standout photographic scenes in the film, with the sun behind her head, dazzling him.


It looks like Owen Roizman is using fast film and overall produces a pleasing grainy, contrasty image, which also allows him to create the second standout scene of the couple lit (it seems) entirely by firelight, worth the price of admission alone:


Eddie Albert and Audra Lindley are the parents who don't approve.

You have to feel for the new wife though, when she's finally dumped.

It ends where it begins.

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