Movie review: 'Feast of Love'

Robert Benton’s recent films have been vexing combinations of gentility and stiffness, and despite a fair bit of nudity "Feast of Love" behaves itself all too well. It’s as neat as a pin; it ties up every loose end in careful "Playhouse 90" style. Despite some awfully smart actors, Benton’s movie made me long for a few interrupted sentences and the occasionally conflicted character.

It comes from Charles Baxter’s novel, which was set in Ann Arbor among a connected group of characters whose hearts lead them here and there, in and out of trouble. Screenwriter Allison Burnett relocates the story to Portland, Ore., where university professor Harry (Morgan Freeman) lives with his wife Esther (Jane Alexander, excellent in a too-small role). Harry frequents the coffee bar operated by Bradley (Kinnear), whose wife leaves him for another woman. Harry catches on to the interloper immediately, but Harry somehow manages to miss the most obvious lesbian eyeballing in the history of cinema and lesbians.

One rainy day a cool, hardened real-estate saleswoman enters Bradley’s cafe. She is Diana (Radha Mitchell), who continues seeing her longtime married lover well after she takes it up with the coffee man. Bradley’s young employee Oscar (Toby Hemingway) falls in love at first sight of Chloe (Alexa Davalos), who must fend off the miserable drunken intrusions of Oscar’s father (Fred Ward). And on it goes, until things get sorted out, happily for most.

Kinnear’s character keeps gassing on about "this crazy dream we’re all trapped in." Harry, the wise old owl whose heart has yet to recover from his own private loss, weighs in with reminders that "the end is always right there in the beginning." Freeman is Mr. Reliable, as always, but he must know by now that narrative hosting duties such as these aren’t exactly stretching his abilities. It is odd to see this superb actor executing every knowing glance and resonant axiom about the power of love to so little effect.

Burnett and Benton cope with the intertwining plot lines well enough, but there’s strangely little vibrancy in "Feast of Love." When various characters make love, the lighting goes all golden-sunset on us (Kramer Morgenthau was the cinematographer) while composer Stephen Trask sneaks in the sensitive guitar lines. The book, and the film, pays tribute to love’s eternal wallop, but despite the performers-it’s especially nice to see Alexander on screen again-"Feast of Love" made me pine for something less civilized. People fall in love, or lust, at least, just like that, all the time. This feast is more like an artfully arranged appetizer plate.