Enough Said (USA, 2013), directed by Nicole Holofcener, is about to disappear from cinemas. But I didn't want to lose the opportunity of watching one of actor James Gandolfini's last works, who died last year, on the 19th of June.
So I bought a ticket to see a romantic comedy movie in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Eva, a divorced masseuse with a daughter who is going to University. The woman is invited to a party in which she meets Marianne, a poet that asks Eva to give her therapeutic massages. After that, Eva is introduced to Albert (Gandolfini), who is also divorced.
Some days later, Eva has a meeting with Albert and begins to go out with him. Meanwhile, Marianne starts a close friendship with the masseuse and tells her everything she disliked about her exhusband, such as his odd habits or his lack of sense of humor. As time passes, Eva finds out that that man and Albert are the same person. From that moment on, under the influence of Marianne's negative comments about the time she was married to Albert, Eva begins to distrust her feelings.
Enough Said deals with fear of new failures: when Eva meets Albert, she is afraid that the relationship will end the same way that her last marriage. What's more, she is uncomfortable with the idea of living alone now that her daughter is planning to move to another city to study. That is the reason why the masseuse tries to predict whether her new engagement will work and she believes Marianne's gossip about Albert without realizing that these are poisonous comments.
I've liked James Gandolfini's acting (that was the main reason I wanted to watch the film). I am used to see him playing the role of a Mafia boss in TV series The Sopranos and it's interesting discovering him as a sloppy man, who is able to express his feelings and is trying to win a woman's heart
I think that Enough Said is a nice, entertaining, realistic movie. This is a stylistically unpretentious film, but it doesn't need it because it tells a story with a inner conflict which everyone can experience. When life gives us a second chance, what's best? Taking precautions or going with the flow? Enough Said (USA, 2013). Dir.: Nicole Holofcener. Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Toni Collette, Catherine Keener. Official website: http://www.enoughsaidmovie.com
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A frontier is an usual stage for adventures. It's a line which separates two worlds and this is ideal for stories involving changes. Two teenagers cross the border between Texas and Mexico in 1949 in All the Pretty Horses (1992), a novel by Cormac McCarthy. This is a tale about becoming an adult and finding out that life is full of injustice. John
Grady Cole (16) and Lacey Rawlins (17) escape from their town riding horses and they intend to work as cowboys in Mexico. They are friends and they don't need many words to understand each other. On their way they meet a young boy, Jimmy Blevins, who gets easily into trouble. But the greatest problem comes when John falls in love with the wrong person. All the Pretty Horses is a honest tale: characters' feelings aren't sweetened. The two friends, who behave like adult men, don't show affection but a strong loyalty. Romantic tension between John and a young Mexican girl named Alejandra is just pressing need. Apart from John, the other star of the novel are horses. Cormac McCarthy devotes many lines to praise the impetuosity of these animals and to explain how to break them. Characters are fascinated with horses and they risk their own safety only to look after them. Desert-like landscapes are described in a lyrical and raw way, they show how little is the human being in an unfriendly topography. Writing style has no tricks, it only tells facts, and dialogues are curt, but clear enough to understand characters' attitude. I think that All the Pretty Horses is an excellent coming-of-age novel, with a young main character who doesn't find his place. The harshness of dialogues, characters and sceneries pervades the book with fatalism. However, horses can symbolize kids' energy and beauty, something it's worth fighting for. All the Pretty Horses (1992), by Cormac McCarthy (Rhode Island, USA, 1933). I've read this novel in Spanish, the edition published in Spain in 2011 by Debolsillo. Haz click aquí si quieres leer este artículo en español.
