A simple story told with sensitivity and subtlety. An understated and wistful ode to isolation and (subsequent) dejection.
This film presents us with a fine example of how critical a movie's rhythm is, in rolling out the story, and piecing the sundry elements together. Here the wonderfully well-paced and tactful tempo has been underscored, throughout, with both an apt soundtrack, and the nuanced body language of the main actors and actresses. I suspect we have seen the best performance of their career from the two leads, Elizabeth Banks and James Marsden, who may eventually "wear it out" in future romantic comedies of the assinine Hollywood categories.
However, two faux pas, both related to the script, marred the film for me: one through carelessness; another through inconsistency. The beginning scene with the magnificent Glenn Close as Lady Macbeth brought up the interesting point of "gusto", of living with passion, rather than the pale substitute of petite bourgeoisie existence; but there is no sufficient followup to that. The preaching of "take a chance" is not quite close to the richer stuff that gusto consists of. This neglect, as I siad, is careless.
Then there is the revelation towards the end, that cheapens the drama. Our fundamental apartness from even those who are closest to us, that profound isolation, seems to be reduces to the consequence of one man's duplicity, which is inconsistent with the complexity built up with the first 2/3 of the movie; as if Jonathan could have saved us all this heartache by simply being "straight" (pun unintended) with himself, so that he could achieve togetherness with one lover or the other, and second-guess the big existential question. Yeah, right.
An aside: Glenn Close is one of the few American actresses who can handle a Shakespearean text, who have the mesmerizing stage presence, the supple, well-developed enunciation, and the looming moral ambivalence that the Bard's great heroines require. It has been my long-time fantasy to see Glenn Close as Lady Macbeth, to deliver such lines as "take my motherly milk and turn it into gall", or "pluck my nipple from the smiling ungummed lips and dash its brain out...", or, "Unsex me here!" This spectacle alone is worth the DVD!
