'Playing' goes for the heart

Courtesy of Miramax Films Jon Stewart and Gillian Anderson in "Playing By Heart."

By Erin Podolsky
Daily Arts Writer

Family is complicated, but it's still family and blood never lies. "Playing by Heart" takes this particular mantra to heart in a portrayal of a group of adults searching for love and relationships in an unlikely world where everything says they'll never find happiness. Director/writer Willard Carroll draws the family of two parents, three sisters and one wild card, marked by tragedy and circumstance, in a series of well-executed vignettes that eventually tell us enough about these characters' lives to go beyond this now-commonplace device.

Look no further for evidence of exactly what a powerful, talented ensemble cast can do for an idea and a screenplay that would be miserable in the hands of the wrong actors. Meredith (Gillian Anderson) is a successful theater director who has been burned by love's bright light too many times; Trent (Jon Stewart) is a 38-year-old architect who is sick of casual sex without commitment. They meet by chance but end up together on purpose. The two are especially impressive in the roles, with Anderson living up to her prior work ("The X-Files") and Stewart displaying ability beyond the comedic.

Gracie (Madeleine Stowe) wishes her husband Hugh (Dennis Quaid) was more spontaneous and imaginative, so she sends him to an improv class while she sends herself to the arms of another man (Anthony Edwards). Hugh (and Quaid, who has been less than prolific of late) takes to pretending to be other people like a duck to water, and while Gracie enjoys the sex-only affair, she ultimately realizes that it's intimacy and love, not just pleasure that she craves.

Joan (Angelina Jolie) is a club-hopping motormouth acting student exiting a relationship and is left with nothing but her one-eyed cat; Keenan (Ryan Phillippe) is a handsome loner who doles out information about himself in bite-size portions. Jolie sparkles as Joan, speaking long, convoluted lines of heady, witty dialogue with ease. Phillippe doesn't fare as well, once again playing the uncommunicative pretty boy (this time with an emotional twist, but it's a twist than can be seen from miles away - secrets aren't so subtle when you're secretive). But Jolie manages to elevate this storyline above an irritatingly morose level.

Hannah (Gena Rowlands) and Paul (Sean Connery) are the parents of this strange brood, but they're in a crisis of their own. Paul has a fatal brain tumor and the weight of a 25-year-old affair on his shoulders that Hannah has yet to forgive him for or understand. Nominally the old folks of the cast, Connery and Rowlands prove that youth has no monopoly on beauty and that conflict can still be fascinatingly ripe even at the 40-year mark of a marriage.

The film bounces back and forth amongst these four storylines and even adds a fifth, much less successful one involving Jay Mohr as a dying AIDS patient and his mother (Ellen Burstyn, who looks like she had an unfortunate run-in with a plastic surgeon) as they spend his last days together. While this plot figures in the periphery of one of the sisters', it bogs down the rest of the crisscrossed film and feels like a cop-out tearjerker next to the other, stronger threads.

"Playing by Heart" features more people speaking more witticisms than is humanly possible, but because of the acting the barb trading is palatable. Carroll can write funny, but because of the cast he found he can also pull off marvelous feats of poignancy that for the most part avoids sniffly sentimentality. "Playing by Heart" is an acting showcase at its best.

01-22-99