The best meal is only as good as the ingredients that it’s composed of. However, the ingredients must also be used in the proper amounts and proportions. Forget an ingredient, and the meal usually suffers.
The same can be said for film, particularly Robert Benton’s Feast of Love: An almost total absence of humor drags down a film that could have been wonderful, but instead achieves only a level of mediocrity.
The film, based on a novel by Charles Baxter, is set in Portland, Ore., and follows the lives of a small group of people as they each deal with different forms of love. Harry Scott (Morgan Freeman) acts as the sage ringmaster, watching and commenting on the exploits of the main characters. Bradley Thomas (Greg Kinnear) is a coffee-shop owner and artist whose wife (Selma Blair) leaves him…for another woman.
Thus begins his quest to find love and happiness again, possibly with Diana (Radha Mitchell), a real-estate broker having an affair with a married man. Oscar (Toby Hemingway), Bradley’s employee, and Chloe (Alexa Davalos) fall madly in love at first sight. While watching all of this with voyeuristic amusement, Harry contends with the recent death of his son and its impact on his relationship with his wife (Jane Alexander).
This film is a story about love, whether it is young love, the love between longtime spouses, love born from an affair, love for one’s children, love between friends, love between soulmates or even love between a man and his dog. The message of the film is that love of any kind is an uncertain gamble, but if you go in with eyes open, it is a risk worth taking.
The multiple storylines all work wonderfully to convey this. The most touching story is that of Oscar and Chloe: Chloe learns early on from a fortune teller that her relationship with Oscar will probably come to a tragic end; despite that fact, however, she is still willing to take the plunge. Everyone else comes to a similar revelation with equally moving results.
Performances are top-notch in this film. Kinnear, who has been chronically underused throughout his career, compels you to sympathize with Bradley, a flawed, but ultimately likable and well-meaning guy who is hopelessly unlucky in love. Hemingway and Davalos hit every note in their roles as young lovers, acting wide-eyed and clingy, but not really adding any new elements to these kinds of characters.
But it is Morgan Freeman who dominates this movie, bringing a world-weary charm to Harry; he has been in love, seen others go down the same road, and cannot help but smile when he sees these characters do likewise. At the same time, you believe that under the surface, Harry is still nursing the pain of losing his son. Freeman never fails to disappoint, and his performance here is no exception.
Freeman opens the movie with a story from Greek mythology about the creation of mankind and of love. Both were made by the gods out of boredom, and when the gods decided to try love themselves, they invented laughter to ease the pain.
Unfortunately, however, the laughter is noticeably absent in this film. Love and pain are present in abundance, but, aside from a few humorous observations from Harry, there is very little levity. Whatever the reason, the lack of humor in this movie deprives it of the one element that would have made it soar. Without this sense of humor, these characters merely spend two hours feeling despondent.
Going in, I so badly wanted to love this movie. At first glance, it has everything one would recommend for making a winning picture. But when you state at the beginning of the film that we need laughter, it only make sense that you would include some for the characters.
Everything else in Feast of Love is fantastic. But by missing that one key ingredient, the whole film suffers greatly.