Silver Linings Playbook

Another week and another screening: this time it's Silver Linings Playbook - a rom com with a difference.

Once again this is a film that has been on my "want to see" list, so it's good to be able to catch it at last.

Here are my notes:

Silver Linings Playbook

USA 2012                    122 minutes

Director:                      David O Russell

Starring:                        Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert de Niro and Jackie Weaver

“Silver Linings Playbook has a suitably upbeat title and several of the key ingredients for a standard Hollywood "feelgood movie" – an oddball hero returning home to make peace with his family, an encounter with a kookie girl whom he ends up chasing through the festive, snow-flecked streets at Christmas, a couple of public contests (a dance and a football game) on the results of which the future depends.  And indeed the movie does make you feel quite good about humanity as the final credits roll.   But this is a David O Russell movie, his sixth since 1994, and for him feeling good is the reward for completing an emotional assault course.”

Philip French

Awards and Nominations

• Won Oscar for Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence) plus seven further nominations including Best Film, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Adapted Screenplay
• Won BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay and two further nominations (Best Actor and Actress)
• A further 60 wins and 58 nominations

Pat (Bradley Cooper) a former school teacher has just spent eight months in a psychiatric hospital suffering from bi-polar disorder following a violent incident with his now ex-wife.  On his release he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) a young widow and despite his initial plan for a reconciliation with his ex-wife Tiffany persuades him to be her partner in a community dance competition and their relationship develops.

Throughout his career David O Russell has maintained an oblique approach to the world as well as a strong interest in dysfunctional families.  He made his debut with Spanking the Monkey (1994) a comedy about a middle-class lad who develops an incestuous desire for his attractive invalid mother, and made his commercial breakthrough with Three Kings (1999) a thriller set in the Gulf War.  His previous film was The Fighter, a biopic of the welterweight boxer Micky Ward and his rough Irish-American background, with the film receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Film and with both Christian Bale and Melissa Bale winning Oscars for their supporting roles.

 His most recent film is American Hustle, again starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper as well as Christian Bale.  The film was well received and has just received 10 Oscar nominations including ones for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

Here's the trailer: