ADORABILE NEMICA

“Se non hai niente di buono da dire di una persona, meglio cucirsi la bocca”

Avete presente il The Mothman Prophecies - Voci dall'ombra con Richard Gere? Film inquietante in cui si parla di morti misteriose per mano di una altrettanto nebulosa creatura, e di tragiche profezie? Beh, si tratta della stessa regia, lo statunitense Mark Pellington, che ha confezionato quest’altro film, Adorabile nemica (<>The Last Word), per certi versi opposto all’altro. Ma che, in diverso modo, guarda alla morte nella prospettiva di una donna di successo, ricca ma anziana, che deve vedersela con una bruttissima reputazione, con la paranoica mania del controllo su ogni cosa: il titolo originale del film The Last Word, ‘l’ultima parola’, del resto, rende bene l’idea del personaggio e della sua ossessiva fisima, che ha finito per allontanarla persino da sua figlia Elizabeth (vedi il cameo della compianta Anne Heche). L’ultima parola’ deve essere sempre la

sua, al punto che vedendo il necrologio elogiativo a carico di un’altra donna di sua conoscenza - che di elogi non ne avrebbe proprio meritati - pensa che sia arrivato il momento giusto per provvedere in tal senso anche per se stessa. Ovviamente calcolando tutto nei minimi particolari. Ma nel processo di questo folle disegno, scaturisce un percorso di graduale catarsi, e non solo per se stessa, che andrà ad operare una sorta di involontario miracolo esistenziale plurimo.

Stiamo parlando della Harriet di una fantastica Shirley Maclaine (oggi quasi novantenne che sembra mantenere una verve straordinariamente ‘green’), qui ben supportata dalla giovane e confusa Anne (Amanda Seyfried) contattata in quanto, per l’appunto, redattrice di necrologi. E così, da un rapporto che nasce oltremodo conflittuale, ne esce una reciproca intesa del tutto inaspettata: una parabola evolutiva in cui trova posto anche la ‘carta vincente’ della piccola di colore Brenda (AnnJewel Lee

Dixon), conosciuta in un’associazione per disagiati ed orfani, cui Harriet/Maclaine si prefigge di cambiarle la vita, naturalmente in meglio. Nulla qui è banale come potrebbe sembrare e il solido copione, carico di sano umorismo, ancora i personaggi ad una storia, paradossalmente, a suo modo plausibile, e pure piuttosto divertente, soprattutto per le gustose battute che allietano il copione (Stuart Ross Fink).

Il fatto che Pellington abbia anche lavorato con numerosi artisti musicali per realizzare svariati video, poi, tra i quali i Pearl Jam, gli U2 e i Foo Fighters e anche con la cantante Demi Lovato per la realizzazione del video ufficiale del singolo Skyscraper, gli ha reso evidentemente agevole l’elaborazione della fase in cui l’anziana Harriet/Maclaine, incredibilmente, si attiva come conduttrice ‘disc jockey’ in seno ad una emittente radio indipendente.
“Qualcosa devi pure essere, Dio ti ha messo al mondo per essere qualcosa”

Ovvio che dietro la Harriet di Shirley Maclaine,

con tutte le titubanze della vecchiaia che non ama dimostrare; le insicurezze di Anne/Seyfried che dovrebbe tentare di scrivere ben altro che necrologi; o il futuro ancora tutto da scrivere di Brenda/, ci sono gli annosi dilemmi esistenziali di sempre, che accomunano più o meno ogni essere umano. E quando la parabola esistenziale rivisitata e rivisitabile nelle foto in bianco e nero appese alla parete o tenute in un album di ricordi, in fase decrescente punta verso il basso, la riflessione sorge spontanea e ne partorisce altre a grappolo. Così capita che, in età avanzata, si senta l’esigenza, non tanto di augurare una buona giornata, ma piuttosto ‘una giornata che abbia un senso’ e, pensando in prospettiva, al ‘momento conclusivo dell’esistenza’, ci si ritrova a considerare che: “la speranza migliore per noi è di non venire mai dimenticati”.

Shirley MacLaine plays another lovable tart-tongued scold in the sort of prefab crowd-pleaser that's lucky to have her.

Here’s a new movie rule: If you’re going to sit through a Sundance “crowd-pleaser,” complete with cardboard situations and cheeseball snark and life lessons, it’s always better if that movie stars Shirley MacLaine. In “The Last Word,” she plays — what else? — a cutely difficult pie-eyed pixie-curmudgeon who is always scolding everyone and telling them how to improve themselves. I can think of many films where she played a similar role that outclass this one — like “Terms of Endearment,” “In Her Shoes,” “Bernie,” or “Postcards from the Edge.” Those were real movies. “The Last Word,” written by Stuart Ross Fink and directed by Mark Pellington, is an eager assemblage of quasi-fake setups and two-stroke characters. It makes “Little Miss Sunshine” look…organic. (It’s also not nearly as well-made.) Yet MacLaine,

who isn’t above falling into high-concept shtick herself, hasn’t lost the gift of spontaneity. At 82, she’s spry and fearless. The movie is glorified claptrap, but she hitches it to her acerbic zest for life and acting and walks away with it.

MacLaine plays Harriet Lauler, an affluent dame who lives by herself in a beautiful Colonial in the town of Bristol, where she once led her own advertising agency. Harriet possessed talent and drive, and still does, but she suffers from what the film calls “obsessive-compulsive personality disorder,” which means that she has to control the world around her and do every last thing her way. She has alienated everyone she’s ever known; at one point, a man calls her hateful, and the camera inches down to show us that he’s wearing a priest’s collar. But the way a movie like “The Last Word” works, this is all our cue

to see that, deep down, Harriet is nurturing a heart of gold.

After accidentally OD-ing on sedatives and red wine (or did she kind of mean to do it?), Harriet takes the action that launches the movie into its orbit of ha-ha cute-ville: She decides that she wants to have her newspaper obituary written…right now. While she’s still healthy and hale. She marches into the offices of the Bristol Gazette, a struggling daily she helped to keep afloat with her advertising, and is introduced to Anne Sherman (Amanda Seyfried), the paper’s obituary writer. It’s a ridiculous mission, and these two have nothing in common, which means that within moments their quibbling/affectionate May-December buddy mentorship has been totally established.

Harriet wants Anne to write an obit that makes her sound like God’s gift to humanity. To do that, Anne has to observe Harriet acting like a good Samaritan, has to see her communing

with her family, and needs a “wild card” — that special defining quality that lends a person’s life distinction. So Harriet does the following wacky things. She looks for a poor, lost inner-city child to rehabilitate, and finds her in Brenda (AnnJewel Lee Dixon), an f-bomb-dropping nine-year-old angelic urchin with Rasta braids who the movie treats like a dancing mascot. She goes to visit the daughter she hasn’t seen in 20 years (Anne Heche), who turns out to be a chip off the old control freak.

She also finds her wild-card thing. It turns out that Harriet was a major music fan up through the ‘70s, and after Anne tells her about an independent radio station in town, Harriet marches into the studio, demands to be installed as a DJ, and within 25 seconds has so charmed the station’s DJ-manager — they both think the Kinks are the most underrated band

of all time! — that she lands a DJ spot. And she’s terrific at it. (It’s all about the song sequencing.) I didn’t “buy“ any of this, but not buying it is sort of the point. The movie is selling a feel-good fantasy: Look, Shirley MacLaine is still hip! Mark Pellington directs “The Last Word” like a neo-‘80s daydreamer — the sort of filmmaker who probably thinks that “A Christmas Story” improved on “It’s a Wonderful Life.” To him, going slightly over-the-top is what movies are about.

Yet once you inch past all the ersatz amusement, MacLaine’s performance begins to take on deeper, richer hues. Harriet may want her obituary written ahead of time, but she is dying — at least, you know, eventually — and MacLaine’s witty yet saddened presence haunts the movie with the sense of a lengthy life that now, inevitably, includes the grand sum of its imperfections.

Seyfried, who can be a vivid actress, has been handed an underwritten part. Anne is supposed to be a gifted essayist who’s been holding back her talent through insecurity — but frankly, I saw neither the gift nor the self-doubt. Yet watching MacLaine’s Harriet embrace her life, after spending too much time rejecting it, leads “The Last Word” to a touching finish. MacLaine has something that shines through and elevates a film like this one. The movie is prefab indie whimsy, but she gives it an afterglow.