"A picture is worth a thousand words," the old cliché goes, and plainly enough "Words and Pictures," starring Clive Owen ("Children of Men") and Juliet Binoche ("The English Patient") puts this and several other clichés to the test in a midlife romantic comedy about finding love and common ground against the backdrop of art and literature.
Owen plays Jack Marcus, a literate and ostentatious private school English teacher who has grown disaffected with both life and work. A once-promising author whose star is no longer rising, Jack now spends his days chiding his students, chafing against his bosses and co-workers, and sipping vodka out of a thermos in his car on his lunch hour. Things are not much better for Jack at home, as most nights he sits alone in front of his computer while attempting to drown writer's block with more alcohol. Owen's performance in the role is engaging, highlighting his versatility as an actor capable of handling the part of a contentious intellectual just as well as an action-movie tough guy. Owen portrays Marcus as at times passionate, egotistical, sullen, witty, manic and tragic. It's a throwback role, the kind you might have expected from a young Richard Dreyfuss, and Owen makes Jack Marcus a guy that audiences want to like despite his obvious faults and frequent boorishness.
Opposite him is Juliette Binoche as Dina Delsanto, an acclaimed painter afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis. Struggling with her career, Dina turns to teaching art at Jack's school to make ends meet while she copes with her condition. Romantic comedies tend to feature cliché female protagonists that are chaotic, career-minded women with no time for relationships and/or uptight ice queens who are nursing emotional trauma and have shut themselves off to the prospect of romance. On the surface, this character mingles a little of both, but thankfully Binoche brings a degree of emotional honesty and depth that makes her demeanor plausible and, more importantly, relatable. Binoche lends just the right balance between hard-won maturity and charming smart-ass, which is necessary for a story about finding midlife romance.
Despite the efforts of its lead actors, however, "Words and Pictures" gets bogged down by a pedestrian screenplay. While the dialogue is decent (and helped tremendously by the nuanced chemistry between Owen and Binoche), the plot is familiar. Strong-willed English teacher meets strong-willed art teacher, sparks fly and tension ensues, finally brewing into a flirtatious tug of war over which is more meaningful: Words or pictures. This philosophical debate soon spills over to the students and a competition between the Honors English and Honors Art classes to determine a winner in “the war” leads up to the film’s climax.
The script by writer Gerald Di Pego ("Message in a Bottle") provides a few legitimately entertaining moments of drama, comedy, romance and philosophy but fails to delve too deeply into any of them, instead lingering in the shallower and safer waters of the typical rom-com format. "Words and Pictures" perhaps should have taken a cue from "Sideways," the 2004 Paul Giamatti vehicle that successfully blended melancholy and romance into an unlikely but effective comedy drama. Instead, the end result for director Fred Schepisi ("Roxanne") is a quirky and broadly drawn mix of solid performances, watered-down "Dead Poets Society" themes, and boilerplate romantic comedy.
3.5 Yaps
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehQimFhQmQg&w=514&h=289]