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The Invisible Circus by Daniel Papkin In a way, Adam Brooks' debut film resembles the late '60s youth culture it examines. It is both admirable in its convictions yet unaware of its limitations; it strives for beauty and meaning, but ends up looking silly. Shot throughout Europe, the film at times loses focus and threatens to relax into a travelogue. Then, as if to make amends, it turns on a dime to grab greedily for import, descending as it does so into melodrama. The extraordinary-looking Jordana Brewster plays Phoebe, a lonely young girl who travels from San Francisco to Europe to investigate the death of the allegorically named Faith (Cameron Diaz), the older sister she worshiped. Phoebe knows the journey her flower child sister made to the continent in 1969 with hopes of changing the world ended with Faith's throwing herself off a cliff in Portugal. The mystery is what brought such a free spirit to such an agitated state. Since it is 1976 and seven years after the fact, the trail is a bit cold by now, and Phoebe flounders until she looks up Faith's ex-boyfriend, the suggestively nicknamed Wolf (Christopher Eccleston), in Paris. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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Overcoming an initial reluctance to speak of the past, Wolf eventually both clarifies and complicates Phoebe's confusion as the two travel to the place where Faith made her end. Both Eccleston and Brewster are naturals, and their best exchanges have a relaxed, truthful feel. At times, however, the script asks more of them emotionally than seems appropriate for their cerebral characters, and the effect is alarmingly comic. So too with Diaz, who is immensely winning as a hippie with a goofy grin but is far less so when inhabiting many of her complicated character's other personae. Brooks has a refreshingly unsentimental take on the period, as well as a good handle on its idiosyncracies. What he does not have is much of a sense of how to tell the story, which is based on Jennifer Egan's novel. He also exhibits a tendency to gravitate towards the obvious in both his writing and directing. All of which is too bad, because parts of the film are good enough to indicate that over the noise of the soap opera dramatics (not to mention the horrid, acoustic guitar soundtrack), a good story is trying to be heard. What did you think of Jordana Brewster's performance in The Invisible Circus? Sound off in the Movie Forum. Photos courtesy of New Line. PAGE 1 | 2 |