Susan Granger’s review of “Heights” (Sony Pictures Classics)
This is the next-to-last film produced by Merchant/Ivory’s Ismail Merchant, who died in London in May. Intrigued by Amy Fox’s one-act play, he sent it to director Chris Terrio, a recent graduate of USC’s film school who had worked as an assistant on “The Golden Bowl.” It follows a half-dozen intersecting characters through a day in Lower Manhattan. There’s a domineering Oscar-winning grande dame of the theater (Glenn Close) who is rehearsing a production of “Macbeth” (while her philandering husband is sleeping with her understudy) and dealing with complicated suspicions about the temperamental fiancŽ (James Marsden) of her photographer daughter (Elizabeth Banks). Then there’s the daughter’s ex-boyfriend (Mark Davis) who arrives in town, a struggling actor (Jesse Bradford), a worldly rabbi (George Segal), a strutting director (Eric Bogosian) and a visiting journalist (John Light). But playing beneath that, there are festering, all-too-obvious secrets that some of the characters harbor. Well-acted but over-written, it’s just not very persuasive, particularly since the scenes are separated by title cards and the dialogue is insipid and banal: “TiVo turns you into a lab rat pressing buttons for more cocaine” and “Pixar is reality.” It’s the kind of sumptuous, yet modest movie that serves as a cinematic curiosity, rather than a compelling multi-character drama like “Crash.” In one scene, while bemoaning the absence of passion today, Close’s character sardonically remarks to her students, “We’re not even people of ice. We’re tap water… For God’s sake, take some risks this weekend!” On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Heights” is a shallow, overly genteel 6. Let’s just call it “Withering Heights.”
