A Love of the Heart
There is a romantic glow to this very undervalued film. It is a throwback to films of the 40's and 50's. Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep give old style performances to match the story's atmosphere, which is sweet and sentimental. It does not make light of the subject matter of having an affair but instead is a film about finding love itself. In keeping with that theme, the romantic feelings of the two leads are never allowed to reach their natural conclusion. The love that gently blossoms is one of the heart.
Frank Raftis (DeNiro) and Molly Gilmore (Streep) are going about their mundane and uninspiring lives amidst the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season in New York when they literally run into each other at a bookshop. Both are married and when they meet again on the train to work, a friendship begins. Even the small prospect of riding to work together is handled gingerly as both are good people who would not want to hurt their spouses.
As they become more...
Streep, DeNiro and Little Moments Transcend Formula Romance
I have a certain fondness for this movie, and twenty years later, it still gets to me. I first saw this movie in a theater during a bleak Chicago winter, and the coziness of this romantic fable warmed me at the right time. Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro - probably at the height of their respective careers in 1984 as respected, Method-style actors and bankable stars - have certainly had more challenging roles to play than the two married suburbanites here, Molly and Frank, who develop a strong attachment to one another by way of train rides back and forth from Westchester to Manhattan. In fact, this movie does not even have the emotional gravity of Noel Coward's "Brief Encounter", which screenwriter Michael Cristopher is apparently mimicking with a mid-eighties sensibility. There are even excellent actors in supporting roles - Harvey Keitel as Frank's best friend going through his own transition, Dianne Wiest as Molly's sex-obsessed best friend, Jane Kaczmarek as Frank's content but...
There are things in life that are inevitable, and we are powerless to control them...
Love is more than an emotion... It's above all, the substance of our being, the gift of oneself...
We all want to fall in love... We all want to be caught up out of our ordinary life... Maybe because it is the only true adventure, maybe because that experience makes us feel completely alive... It may only last a moment, an hour, an afternoon, but that doesn't diminish its value, because we are left with memories that we treasure for the rest of our lives...
Here, Merryl Streep and DeNiro are the kind of people who are ready to take action on an opportunity... Following a chance meeting in a bookshop, pre-Xmas, the two central characters find themselves inexplicably drawn to each other... But both are married... She has a husband, he has a wife and two lovely kids...
Both are meant to be together but they are inexperienced, uptight... And neither really knows what to do with his fear, shyness, hesitation, and confusion... On this thread of plot hangs a...
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