A composer suffering from blank page syndrome meets a seductive tugboat captain in New York, who changes his trajectory.
Rebecca Miller’s seventh feature film, the first since the documentary she dedicated in 2017 to her famous father, the playwright Arthur Miller (Death of a traveling salesman), is inspired by the profession of his composer son, Cashel Day-Lewis. This is not, however, a family affair.
Rather, it is the story of a composer, Steven (Peter Dinklage), who has struggled with white score syndrome since the failure of his last opera and his subsequent depression. The medications given to him over and over again by his former psychologist Patricia (Anne Hathaway), who has since become his wife, do not seem to have the desired effects on his anxiety attacks and his lack of inspiration.
By chance, in a bar in Brooklyn, Steven meets Katrina (Marisa Tomei), captain of a tugboat from Baton Rouge, by her own admission “addicted to romance”, who will have the effect of a hurricane on his life. At the same time, the son of Patricia, an obsessive about cleanliness who reconnects with Catholicism, experiences his first romantic feelings with the daughter of their housekeeper.
We inevitably think of the cinema of Woody Allen, the undeniable influence of Rebecca Miller’s previous feature-length fiction film, the rather charming Maggie’s Plan (with Greta Gerwig and Ethan Hawke), in 2015. This time even crazier.
Miller, a multidisciplinary artist who was initially a painter, then an actress, before moving behind the camera, had the good idea of calling on Bryce Dressner, guitarist of The National, for his soundtrack. The piece that accompanies the credits is by Bruce Springsteen.
She Came to Me, presented at the opening of the last Berlinale, is a romantic comedy which dissects the genre, with its mise en abyme and its references to other forms of art (opera in particular). It’s not a memorable film, far from it. But despite the shortcomings of its scenario – the twists and turns are improbable even for a fable – it is rather amusing, even moving at times. We smile more than we laugh, but it’s just offbeat and witty enough to distinguish itself from all the formatted romantic comedies of Hollywood cinema.
Indoors
Romantic comedy
She Came to Me
Rebecca Miller
Peter Dinklage, Anne Hathaway, Marisa Tomei
1:42 a.m.