David Edelstein
“Crimes of the Heart is a wonderful lark, a vacation from stardom for three leading ladies--Spacek, Diane Keaton, and Jessica Lange. It's a vacation for the audience, as well. I don't know of any pleasure in the theater greater than watching good actors pass the ball back and forth among themselves: how happy they look when they forget the burdens of stardom and settle into an ensemble. The three bring a back-to-nature pride to their work, using little makeup, doing nothing to hide their ages. The film has a glowing, Ivory soap quality, but also an aura of weirdness--that .56 per cent that's anything but pure….
“…. Over the course of the play, they think and do things that nice white Southern girls are taught they're not supposed to think and do--sleep with married men or black 15-year-olds, giggle in the face of death, shoot their husbands. Different as these women are, they're Siamese triplets, joined at the criminal heart. Their mother might have killed herself, but she was all alone; the sisters recognize their own madness in one another's eyes, and live to tell.
“….[W]hen the three actresses are together onscreen, anywhere you look there's something going on. I'd guess these sisters embody the three ways Henley sees herself…. Each character is a turn, and made of fairly thin stuff, but in the hands of superstars these sisters are like momentous forces of nature. Each brings the baggage of her life--and stardom--to her role, and we fill out their histories in our heads.
“Spacek's Babe is the showstopping part, but Diane Keaton's Lenny and Jessica Lange's Meg are marvelous, too, in vastly different ways. Keaton, the black sheep, lets herself look heavy and blotchy, and wears shapeless clothing; she peers at the world from under layers and layers. Nothing comes easily to Lenny, or to Keaton, either, whose mature performances are high-wire acts; she feels unsteadily through each line, and leaves herself wide open for ridicule. There are moments in Crimes of the Heart when everything seems wrong--her accent, her flailing gestures, her timing--but she pulls a great performance out of the jowls of a ghastly one. She dares to play a woman who's by no stretch an actress, who struggles just to live in the moment, carry on a conversation, move. And Keaton has bits--snorting with laughter, shrieking in fury over a box of chocolates her sister has mauled and discarded--when the emotions take over her completely….
“In case there's any doubt about the stature of these actresses, director Bruce Beresford…. shoots them from way down below, so that they loom in the frame like giants….
“…. The play is an elixir for actors, the way acting proves an elixir for Henley--it's how you use your craziness and make contact. Crimes of the Heart is the best kind of sentimental theater, where goofy sentimentality is an end in itself--a way of warming up a cold and lonely existence. This Christmas it's the moviegoer's eggnog.”
David Edelstein, Village Voice, date ?
“…. Over the course of the play, they think and do things that nice white Southern girls are taught they're not supposed to think and do--sleep with married men or black 15-year-olds, giggle in the face of death, shoot their husbands. Different as these women are, they're Siamese triplets, joined at the criminal heart. Their mother might have killed herself, but she was all alone; the sisters recognize their own madness in one another's eyes, and live to tell.
“….[W]hen the three actresses are together onscreen, anywhere you look there's something going on. I'd guess these sisters embody the three ways Henley sees herself…. Each character is a turn, and made of fairly thin stuff, but in the hands of superstars these sisters are like momentous forces of nature. Each brings the baggage of her life--and stardom--to her role, and we fill out their histories in our heads.
“Spacek's Babe is the showstopping part, but Diane Keaton's Lenny and Jessica Lange's Meg are marvelous, too, in vastly different ways. Keaton, the black sheep, lets herself look heavy and blotchy, and wears shapeless clothing; she peers at the world from under layers and layers. Nothing comes easily to Lenny, or to Keaton, either, whose mature performances are high-wire acts; she feels unsteadily through each line, and leaves herself wide open for ridicule. There are moments in Crimes of the Heart when everything seems wrong--her accent, her flailing gestures, her timing--but she pulls a great performance out of the jowls of a ghastly one. She dares to play a woman who's by no stretch an actress, who struggles just to live in the moment, carry on a conversation, move. And Keaton has bits--snorting with laughter, shrieking in fury over a box of chocolates her sister has mauled and discarded--when the emotions take over her completely….
“In case there's any doubt about the stature of these actresses, director Bruce Beresford…. shoots them from way down below, so that they loom in the frame like giants….
“…. The play is an elixir for actors, the way acting proves an elixir for Henley--it's how you use your craziness and make contact. Crimes of the Heart is the best kind of sentimental theater, where goofy sentimentality is an end in itself--a way of warming up a cold and lonely existence. This Christmas it's the moviegoer's eggnog.”
David Edelstein, Village Voice, date ?
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