evening and welcome to another thrilling episode in the story we call a fistful of popcorn it's a movie review show out of princeton new jersey and i'm tonight's moderator bob brown and we have two of our regular panelists with us tonight to my left is janet stern and to my right is marilyn temple and tonight we're going to do what we usually do discuss two indie films relationships very close relationships and one is called the lovers and the other is called the wedding plan and they're very different but yet quite similar in that way so janet do you want to discuss the lovers and we'll talk about that yes this is the latest entry and i guess it's a sort of a new genre it's the romance movie that of apply or lack of romance movie that peels to baby boomers what with the one we saw last year with tom courtney and this is a movie about a married couple a long married couple in the united states played by tracy letts and debra winger who are both having affairs that's not a spoiler we know this from the start they don't know it but we know it and somehow through the course of this film and i'm not sure how they decide that they are actually hot for each other they've been apart for so long physically in their bedrooms in their lives that when they wake up close to each other one day they realize hey the spark is there so they start to rekindle their own love affair much to the displeasure of the two lovers lovers that the years back your lovers but then this son and his girlfriend come home for a visit and things really go haywire and i'm not going to tell you the ending i don't think it's a spoiler but for this movie you know you've got to have some reason to  she did but now and i thought she was that was only revealed to her after the son came home when the husband's lover comes up to her car and yeah and does a cat noises yeah and that's what i thought that's when i thought she lured and that he had a lover no i don't think that mr we that but i think i think it may be except from a son's point of view immaterial was over and what they were doing in their spare time went of no interest to the other and then that one point in fact one of them says to their extramarital lover i'll tell my wife that i'm working late but she doesn't really care isn't yeah yeah and that that's true now in this film it's never quite clear to me what the reasons for the affairs were in the first place does that was an important issue it was very important ok i couldn't i did not really accept the premise of this movie i was very important to me that i did not understand why any of this had happened the lover or the respective lovers well one in one case she's practically crazy i don't understand what this guy son and why you would stay with her she's maybe appealing and attractive and accomplished but she's also going to she's trouble yeah and he said sort of like you said before the show kind of like a the well i think part of the point was you weren't supposed to i can be all i think that was part of the point yeah that it wasn't an easy movie in the sense that there was nobody to really identify with or like because they're all they're all unpleasant well they're not in different areas and thought i was thinking back to a movie that we are if you had a long long time ago of the ice storm where kevin kline is having an affair with a neighbor and  conversations about oh never listen to me and that same sort of feeling of entrapment that people feel in a long marriage and you're right marilyn and that actually does make the ending makes sense yeah and i don't want to tell it but you're right i think you're absolutely right that that leads to that ending you're right and that now and now it will be like a little better but i think that one of the questions you have to ask  s if this is a sort of a modern love story is this the way marriages work that have you come to the point where you're just totally bored with one another and you need an outside ok now you raise an interesting point though is when you saw the film at first you wanted to identify with somebody at least yes i think it's based on my previous appreciation of tracy letts as an actor oh that is actor problem we saw him in the one the philip roth and shane indignation where he played dean and those yeah those perfect that performance in his various scenes was mesmerizing when i was a better written film makes to her lover about not not being paying attention to his writing problems he's a writer and not listening closely when he reads his voice work to her and that also sounded fake right very and i think that may have been the point is that they're following scripts that they've done over and over again in their own relationship and they know what they need to say film and i could imagine this situation being done by woody allen for example the much fun yes but it would have had her point have been a script would have been fine we'd have had more yeah there would have been more what do you think it worked i mean we're not going to give a spoiler but did you feel at the end payoff i thought it was interesting that in the audience we were in and it was just friday night there were maybe so i'm not so that is why when that happened i thought why didn't this work for me while this whole convecting that it's made me feel i was an audience where people laughed at certain points and i didn't find it all that funny i mean there were certain things you could find funny our ironic but not a lot of real laugh out loud funny this so that i didn't i didn't i didn't react the way the the audience was really i mean let me take on something specific in your question there were a lot of things that happened in the movie that seemed to lead nowhere for example he's always late  that reference at some point late in the film that one point he was a musician and right that he had a really bad cover band and that he was kind of sentiment into something that will make money and good money if you ask me because that was a nice hat not really what but and also another thing that i was problematic and so maybe the film didn't work for me was the son because he was too violent too fast i don't and he knew he was coming home for three days to see his parents bringing his girlfriend who they're dying to me or would like to me and right away he erupts in a very very psycho way and i thought i was that young woman he brought home i get the hell out but she doesn't we see a scene later on where you know you know for instance i didn't understand why that larry falls to me that that young fellow follows to me because it seems to me that a young man of that generation would not necessarily be as upset to find out his parents were getting divorced especially since when he's on the train on the way there he tells his girlfriend he wishes parent yes the horse so finding out they are getting to be why they hate each other should  such a shock i thought he was more by the fact that all of a sudden they seem to be lovey dubby and so he could see the boundary as you saw me yeah you're right about that was what was wrong my butt is but his reaction i only that what they have they haven't done a good wedding planner although i found out it was originally called through the wall which is actually better than the movie which is about a young woman of well night so younger she's thirty two and she's lived in a very ultra orthodox community in israel when thirty two is consider over the hill and she's a spinster basically but she wants still wants to get married and wants to have a family and it's about her quest to make that come true there's a wrench thrown into her plans when she finally gets a fiance and while they're at the catering hall tasting the different menu  items he says i really have to tell you i don't want it mattered to you because i don't love you and she's very distressed because the wedding is like three weeks away and so she keeps the reservation all right and says god will find me a groom by the eighth day of hanukkah which is when that the reservation is made and the movie is basically charting her efforts she makes efforts even though she hopes god will provide but she makes efforts to find someone to fill in the missing us filling the void which is about a woman who marries her brother in law after her sister dies also said and i'm extremely strict orthodox sect in israel where the family sounds like a very israeli film to me well very well oh sure naturally yes it's a very kosher film i was in the theater and as i said before the show there were about maybe three other people rolls out i absolutely think it is an issue but now you would have to be well i asked in general i would say you'd have to be interested in israeli society to be interested in this film but maybe that maybe prevention allowed that way i don't think i guess i didn't feel that i felt that it could be more universal i mean you haven't in this case you have a very winning star up main actor she's compelling that's one thing but the other thing is what she asks is which is that god will provide a groom yes there i agree with you that that's that's that's an inch but it's a theological question but there are other things about the film which i found were more universal for example the relationships among women she and her friends and her sister and her sister and her mother but especially her friend frankie who i think although this film the premise is that god will find her and even her rabbi says you know i don't put that much work on guard because if it doesn't come through relationship between frankie and her particularly i felt it disarmed me and i thought that faggy never wavered in her faith in her friend yeah i get what she wanted that was to be there although she faith i actually looked up what this particular has said except was and it was very interesting she goes to visit the tomb of rabbi not met rice ukraine in the ukraine and a man was a very interesting thing here and that one of the things he believed in was the you should have a personal relationship with god that you should talk to god when you pray you shouldn't stick to just written prayers you should talk to god as if god was your friend which is what she goes to his tomb to do and confess yeah that he is feeling that maybe she's a faker in some way and that doesn't really believe that her faith is not as strong as it is and as someone totally faithful we me and so i feel sort of interest interested to find out that that's because in some ways she doesn't strike you as a ultra orthodox woman she seems very maybe that which makes our unmarriageable tina fey seems very independent and outgoing and not primarily female b and the men were kind of in this well you know i'm like my take on these men was of course she's looking for a man of faith and somebody she can respect and that they can share that together these men seem to have are the ones that she talks with there weren't a whole lot of men that we see her close with but the ones we do is they're definitely very faithful man and they say they spot something special in her but she's kind of playing the game of not deciding it's as though she's withdrawn her own responsibility in those things and she's so invested in god's choice that somehow  out despite whatever she does or says right in that same to you yeah no i think you're right i think that men are puzzled by her completely puzzled perhaps even in a mysterious way which makes her again even more attractive than she would doesn't look at her and she said well when you look at me and he says no i am not looking at any woman before marriage because then the woman i choose as my wife will be the most beautiful woman in the world but i think that one of the things that made me uneasy in the movie you said you like the women movement and i did too and i liked her very much but the men seemed a bit caricature and the way she treated them seemed a little bad ago and you didn't you didn't pick up the bait and why did you i mean change your mind and she says despair which he finds off putting i'm and so i think the treatment of that she couldn't look at a man with a disability and see beyond the disability and that's a shortcoming of hers and i think she was cavalier i think in her treatment of the man yes she had she had a particular road that she was going  sort of light would come down from heaven experienced man and she would know he was the right choice and that isn't what ends up happening now in a sense but a miracle because of her yeah in the sense don't worry i didn't get quite what have i done i that came apart well she realized that he really wasn't a practical person for an orthodox woman to marry a  i think one of the interesting scenes in the movie happens very early in you know this is a light hearted movie i think it was somewhat serious she goes to sort of a matchmaker  who spreads fish crush on her face and then tells her to say what do you want and she says why what i'd like to get married what do you really want well i want to having i want to feel connected and i want someone to read and she presses or impresses her until until what she once becomes much more complicated than what she says at first and i think that's kind of the message of the movie is that a lot of people are not honest with themselves about what they really want which brings us right back which brings us back to the love and indeed indeed that that our own emotions  are and thoughts are sometimes and mysterious to ourselves and i think that is the message of both movies well with sum up by saying we think of them well i like the lovers better now that i came to the show and i really enjoyed the wedding planner because that there were so many things that were so many aspects that were unique and not seen before and i and i always like seeing strong friendships among women which i don't find phony and these were not but but through the wall or in the waiting plan was a lot of fun and sweet and i think that since it was it's one of the things we say well that's the strength of a woman director is that the women characters are really interesting right i didn't think that you know i liked the wedding planner a little better than the lovers i thought the lovers was a one trick pony and the wedding plan had  one of those endings that you know i mean that was what it was a back in the end but the actress was very appealing i was really one with the equivalent of best actress in israel there were a lot of no names in this film which is fine with me because you know you just didn't know what to expect and it was great well thanks for joining us on his phone popcorn and like the movies we like it or