Friday, March 12, 2010

A movie review: The Yellow Handkerchief

"The Yellow Handkerchief." This is a lovely though flawed film. The movie starts with Brett Hanson (William Hurt) getting released from jail. He ends up at a cafe where Martine (Kristen Stewart) is having a hard time dealing with a guy she'd met the previous night. Also in the cafe is an annoying young man named Gordy (Eddie Redmayne). Through circumstances, they join up for a few days. Brett has this desire to head towards his home where his wife May (Maria Bello) lives -- or at least he hopes she lives there. Gordy is on an adventure. Martine just wants to escape her life for awhile.

There are flashbacks where you go back six years or so where Brett and May got to know each other.

Flaws

I didn't buy the fact that Martine could fall for Gordy. I read one review where Gordy is described as cocky. I saw him as having a rather low IQ with a tendency towards the weird.

There are also two scenes of near sexual violence. Definitely not rape. Probably not sexual assault. But scenes of two men taking excess liberties and in both cases their "victims" fall for them.

Beauty

A slow movie that seems to give you nothing through most of the running time, but everything is slowly building until you come to the end where you get an emotional lift.

After seeing 'Twilight: New Moon,' it was nice to see Kristen Stewart in a good role. The movie was made in 2008. I don't know when it was actually filmed. She was probably somewhere between the ages of 16-18.


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