A beautiful romance that somehow plays sweet without ever plummeting to saccharine depths and sincere without becoming insipid, Message In A Bottle is the kind of small drama light on histrionics and bombast, that is often overlooked by critics and theatergoers. Yet, it stays with you longer than any disease-of-the-week melodrama or overblown courtroom drama.
Theresa Osborne (Robin Wright), a lonely researcher for a syndicated columnist discovers a glass bottle washed ashore Cape Cod with an impassioned appeal for forgiveness inside. The columnist publishes the letter and sets off a furor of sightings up and down the Atlantic seaboard -- several more bottles have been found all containing letters longing for a wronged wife named Catherine.
Theresa traces the stationery to a fishing village in North Carolina and travels there to scoop the story. The letter writer turns out to be Garret Blake (Kevin Costner), a recently widowed shipbuilder who lives with his father, Dodge (Paul Newman) near the bay. Embroiled in a battle with his wife’s family and unable to get beyond her death, Garret falls for Theresa in spite of himself.
Kevin Costner delivers a steady-handed, subtle performance on a par with his work in Field Of Dreams. Paul Newman is terrific, although that almost goes without saying, and Robin Wright’s portrayal of Theresa is imbued with Wright’s signature grace.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment