The Lady in the Water -- Rhinotainment

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Date Posted: 07:41:08 07/24/06 Mon
Author: Rocket
Subject: The Lady in the Water

I saw this one over the weekend.

Have you ever come out of a film, unable to decide whether or not you liked it? This is how I feel about The Lady in the Water.

While I found the film to be quite original, completely fascinating, and often challenging, it also seemed to be missing some key elements which could have really pulled the whole story together and given the viewer a sense of solidity.

In the film, Paul Giamatti portrays the querky landlord of an apartment complex, filled with even querkier tennants. He's a likeable character that the audience immediately sympathizes with. He takes his job seriously and seems content with what he does, but it's apparent early on that he's purposely holding back his own potential.

Giamatti keeps finding indications that someone within the complex has been swimming in the outside pool after hours. One night, after spotting a figure disappear into the pool and not come up for air, the panicked Giamatti tries to save the individual, but ends up konking his head and falling into the pool.

In a scene right out of "Splash", he awakens in his apartment to find a scantily clad woman (Bryce Howard) who he realizes has saved his life. He finds himself fascinated and intrigued by the stranger, but not at an "attraction level" - more like in a fatherly manner.

After some strange, cryptic statements made by her, Giamatti somehow knows to ask an old female Asian tenant about one of the words spoken by Howard. This leads to the uncovering of an ancient fairy tale, filled with key characters who Giamatti later maps to different tenants who live in the apartment. In the fairy tale, the lady from the water needs to be protected from an evil villian. Giamatti recognizes the danger and does everything he can to save her.

Now the premise of the film was quite ingenious. Reportedly, the idea stemmed from an actual fairy tale that M. Night Shyamalan had written for his children. And I loved the mystery of identifying which tenants in the complex filled which roles.

But the mystery was also what ultimately hurt the film. If you're going to transform a fairy tale into reality, you also have to ground that story in some type of reality.

Giamatti bought into the fairy tale bit almost INSTANTLY. There was practically no self-doubt whatsoever. And when he would come to a tennant with his outrageous claims, they wouldn't react as if those claims were outrageous as all. They were all too willing to accept that they were indeed a character in a fairy-tale. No one thought Giamatti was crazy. No one really doubted any of the wide-eyed claims he made.

Because of this, the viewer loses their ability to really invest themselves in the characters, even though each character is well-defined, well-acted, and interesting. This also plants the seed within the viewer that everything that is happenning is simply a "dream" from Giamatti himself. Maybe that konk on the head from the pool had sent him to the Wizard of Oz where familiar acquaintances were now characters within a fantasy. If the film had gone this direction, it would have lost some of its originality, but it would have also made more sense.

So when the big "payoff" of the film comes, the viewer finds themselves asking "Wait a minute? This was all real???"

Again, I appreciated the originality, liked the concept, and liked the characters. But those characters simply didn't react the way they would in the "real world". And it's frustrating that possibly 30 minutes of extra film could have solved the entire problem.

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Replies:

Not sure Giamatti can carry the lead in a major film. -- Silk, 18:40:16 07/25/06 Tue
- Giamatti was not the problem -- Dog of War, 06:19:15 07/26/06 Wed
  - Agreed -- Rocket, 11:52:55 07/26/06 Wed