| Reviewer Roundup |
| 1. |
 | Harvey Karten |
| review follows |
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| 2. |
| Steve Rhodes |
| read the review |
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Review by Harvey Karten
No Rating Supplied
Whenever we had a bull session at the fraternity house back
in college days, we'd discuss the young women of the campus
and the surrounding area schools. If any of us found a
particular coed to be grouchy for a period of time, our diagnosis
was consistently, "She's not getting it." Nowadays, such a
conclusion would considered politically incorrect, though no
doubt the guys at the fraternity houses still bandy it about, but as
I interpret John McKay's concept in his debut feature film
"Crush," there's at least some truth in it. Look at McKay's
principal character, Kate (Andie MacDowell), for example.
Though she's at the top of her career and still in her early
forties living in a quaint English village in the Cotswolds and
headmistress of a tony school she's moody and distracted and
downright unhappy. When she gets together for a weekly
session with her two likewise successful buddies, Janine
(Imelda Staunton) and Molly (Anna Chancellor), the three of
them bitch about their unsuccessful attempts to find decent
men. Molly is a chain-smoking family doctor and Janine is a
police inspector, but the former has been married and divorced
three times while the latter seems to be ready to give up
altogether. When Kate does find a man who she thinks is the
love of her life, a handsome 25-year-old organist and former
pupil named Jed (Kenny Doughty), she enjoys an ecstatic
sexual relationship which changes her life and mellows her
buddy-buddy discussions.
Andie MacDowell is made for this kind of role, the sort which
reached near-classic stature with "Four Weddings and a
Funeral." In her last picture, "Harrison's Flowers," the forty-four
year old actress who looks stunning when she lets down her
long frizzy hair is determined to find her photojournalist
husband in Bosnia despite assurances from everyone that he's
dead. In "Crush, despite assurances from her two best friends
that she should consider her much younger friend to be dead
because the relationship simply would not work out, she persists
just as strongly.
This absorbing movie, exquisitely photographed by Henry
Braham in rich golds and browns among the lovely cottages in
the English countryside giving it a Merchant-Ivory look, gets its
edge from Janine's and Molly's attempts to dissuade Kate from
her new passion, with Molly in particular advising her pal
(largely out of envy) that the young stud would wear her out and
then go looking around for someone his own age. Among the
townsfolks concerned about the affair is Gerald, the reverend at
the school, an older man who bears a crush of his own on the
gorgeous Kate but has been too shy to propose marriage.
We get a picture of small-town England as a place that looks
swell to the eye, but an area in which we might not want to live.
While this is the sort of community in which everyone knows
everyone else and is supportive for the most part, the same
claustrophobic atmosphere can turn on the resident. Everyone
knows your business. Everyone has something to advise or, if
not, is ready to give a dirty look or a titter of two to a "fallen"
woman who passes on the street.
Some might call this a poor-man's "Four Weddings and a
Funeral," while at least one other critic has said that the movie is
"not one for the men." The latter comment is downright silly
since, at the very least, don't all men want to know what women
talk about when they get together and guzzle gin, eat chocolates
and smoke? Despite the down-and-dirty talk by the three
women about us scuzzy males, this is not the sort of picture that
would require you to hide under the chair to avoid your date's
wrath. This is not quite a "Waiting to Exhale." "Crush" is, rather,
a superbly acted, edgy, fast-paced romp with enough originality
to bypass the usual buddy-movie cliches.
Copyright © 2002 Harvey Karten
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