The Seasons: Four Love Stories
A quartet of romantic vignettes set in New England, with a wide disparity of effectiveness between them.
The challenge with movies that are a string of loosely-connected vignettes holds the same you have when picking a basketball team: not everybody is going to shoot the ball well.
Films like “Babel” are a good example: some of the sequences work very well; others, not so much. We wish the engaging vignettes would linger while hoping the drag-y ones would hurry up and exit the screen.
“The Season: Four Love Stories” is a sweet-natured, micro-budget feature from writer/director/producer/composer Paul Schwartz. Set in New England during the latter portion of the pandemic, it features just what the title says: a quartet of romantic tales. Each is centered around a pair of lovers (or would-be lovers), though sometimes characters from one piece lightly intrude into another.
I found two of the stories quite compelling and interesting. The other two lagged behind. Such is life.
The best vignette involves Jane and Bill (Joan Porter and Ed Setrakian) as 80-something former lovers reuniting on the same day they last saw each other 60 years ago — Valentine’s Day. Bill’s career as an aspiring writer took him away, and Jane has resented him ever since.
Ironically, his writing career fizzled out and he became a literature professor instead, while she turned to poetry and made a name for himself. Now, with Bill’s wife passed away, he’s looking to rekindle the old, forgotten flame.
Setrakian and Porter make for a pleasing couple, even as Jane resists his overtures. She’s smart and fierce, and not about to play the patsy for anyone. If they are going to reunite, Bill’s going to have to earn it.
The second good piece involves a married couple in late middle age, Emma (Anna Holbrook) and Kevin (Brian Hotaling). They fled New York City when the pandemic began, which meant he had to give up his career as a high-end hotel manager. There isn’t much call for his skills in the sleepy little towns around them, and he’s become annoyed at being cooped up and useless.
Meanwhile, Emma is a success romance novelist whose daily imaginings take her into a black-and-white world like a Golden Age Hollywood film noir, where her hopes and anxieties can have play. She becomes worried that Kevin has grown infatuated with Samantha (Kathleen Simmonds), the chef at nearby bistro that has just reopened.
It’s a colorful and vivid portrait of love that is dying on the vines, but perhaps has the chance to grow some new buds.
The first section that takes place chronologically is the weakest, involving Nick (Mike Keller) and Sasha (Katya Preiser), who had just begun their relationship with COVID happened and have been forced to live together ever since. Now, she’s ready to move out while he’s still harboring a mountain of resentment over feeling trapped.
They travel from the Big Apple up to the countryside for the 70th birthday of his aunt, Flora (Margo Sappington), which is their last-gasp attempt to salvage the relationship. Things play out exactly as expected with zero surprises. Preiser has some nice, pensive moments but Keller acts like he’s waiting for his sitcom audition.
The last section has potential, but it’s so truncated it seems almost like an afterthought. Shiloh (Keira Lassor) is a skatergirl of about 10 who finds herself smitten with an older boy (Jaden Pace). She goes on a long, boring shopping spree with her mom to trade in her sneakers-and-T look for something more girly.
Of course, disappointment surely lies ahead. But maybe with a nudge, Shiloh can find a more appropriate object for her affections.
“The Seasons” is a low-budget affair, and it often shows. The camera positioning is sometimes awkward, and the audio will suddenly fade out if a character moves their head too far.
You don’t have to have huge production values to make a good movie, though the look-and-feel here is often downright amateurish.
Movies, like real romance, acan be an up-and-down affair, feast or famine. “The Seasons” at least boasts two genuinely moving love stories, and that’s more than a lot of flicks can say.