Butler's Cinema Scene

“TAKE THIS WALTZ” My rating: C+ (Opening Aug. 10 at the Tivoli)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Some nagging voice in the back of my head tells me I should have liked “Take This Waltz” a whole lot more.

But I cannot lie. I didn’t.

Going in, it sounded like a winner: Michelle Williams starring in the new film written and directed by Sarah Polley, whose Altzheimer’s drama “Away From Her” was one of the best movies of 2006.

But I found “Take This Waltz” pushing me away instead of pulling me in. In part this is because Polley has fashioned a romance of indecision, a brave move but not one filled with big emotional hooks.

Another problem may be that “Take This Waltz” is very much a woman’s picture. I don’t mean that in any sexist way…rather, it feels as if Polley has dedicated herself to capturing a woman’s view of life and romance on the screen with such singlemindedness that those of us with our plumbing on the outside may feel excluded.

Maybe women will view the film differently.

Willams plays Margot, a freelance writer. As the film begins she’s on a tour of a 200-year-old fortress in Nova Scotia where costumed colonial characters encourage her to whip a “lawbreaker” locked in the stocks.

Luke Kirby

There she meets Daniel (Luke Kirby), who calls her on her lame excuse for not taking a cat-o-nine-tails to the bound re-enactor. On her flight back to Toronto, she finds herself sitting next to Daniel. When they sharing a cab ride from the airport, she discovers he lives just down the block from the house she shares with her amiable husband Lou (Seth Rogan, pretty much playing it straight).

“Take This Waltz” (the movie’s title comes from the Leonard Cohen song of the same name) is about Margot’s growing fascination with Daniel, an artist who makes ends meet by pulling a pedi-cab.

It’s not like she and Lou are on the ropes. Theirs is a comfortable if no longer passionate relationship (was it ever?). He’s a big teddy bear who spends his days preparing various chicken dishes for a proposed cookbook.

But Daniel makes it clear that he’ll be ready whenever Margot is, and that knowledge leaves her torn between the thrill of a new relationship and the stability of her marriage.

As portrayed by Williams, Margot is no femme fatale. She’s actually kind of plain and childlike. Her sexuality is tightly reined in; she’s clumsy and

Sarah Silverman

unsure of herself in social situations. There’s certainly nothing in this portrayal to suggest she’s ever cheated on Lou. For that matter, he may very well have been her only romantic relationship.

“Take This Waltz” is pretty much a three-character story. But fleshing things out a bit is a subplot involving Margot’s sister (Sarah Silverman, like Rogan playing it straight), a wife and mother with a drinking problem. She’s been on the wagon for months but still dreams of going on a bender. Her suspended affair with booze offers a nice parallel to Margot’s infatuation with Daniel.

Late in the film Polley offers a technical tour de force, a sequence in which the camera continuously circles a bed in which the once-demure Margot now engages in a series of sexual liaisons (two women, one guy; one guy, two women). The idea, apparently, is that by this time Margot has been thoroughly liberated in matters of the flesh, though nothing in her previous depiction suggested she ever entertained such lascivious notions. It feels kind of phony, perhaps even exploitative.

 | Robert W. Butler