Clive Owen, Juliette Binoche
“WORDS AND PICTURES” My rating: C+ (Opens June 13)
111 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
If “Words and Pictures” is about as deep as your average college entrance essay, at least it’s more entertaining.
Directed by veteran Aussie filmmaker Fred Schepsi, “W&P” is like “Dead Poets Society” risen from the grave. There’s a bit of the zombie about it.
In a posh suburban prep school, an honors English teacher and an honors art teacher wage a love/hate feud over which has the most power and importance: words or visual images.
In this corner, Jack Marcus (Clive Owen), a once-promising poet/novelist who hasn’t written anything in years. Frustrated by his inability to share his love of literature with his indifferent students (if these entitled jerks in blue blazers are the school’s intellectual elite, I fear for our republic), Jack’s idea of preparing a class plan is to fill a thermos with ice-cold vodka.
The other brawler is a newcomer to the school. Dina Delsanto (Juliette Binoche) is a moderately-famous painter whose career has been cut short by crippling rheumatoid arthritis. Now she teaches art to students who don’t appear particularly gifted or dedicated. Still, she tells the kids, pictures provide truth while words offer nothing but lies.
Gerald Di Pego’s screenplay views both Jack and Dina as damaged goods hoping for a bit of redemption by inspiring their students. Initially she is put off by his pushy attitude, but despite his slovenly look and cocky attitude, Jack is a charmer. At least until he goes on a drunken binge.
Anyway, their competition revitalizes the student body. Suddenly the kids are writing poems and short stories, painting pictures, and debating the merits of literature and the visual arts.
If only it were that easy.
And, yeah, Jack and Dina do get it on, though not without some serious ups and downs.
“Words and Pictures” is one of those films destined to please mainstream moviegoers while setting real teachers off on a binge of frustrated eye-rolling. It’s been constructed so as to provide multiple opportunities for characters to wax poetic over the meaning of art. At the same time, it’s hugely dispiriting in the way it treats the kids.
In fact, the young people depicted here are unworthy of great teachers. They’re smug and obnoxious and hugely irritating. Screenwriter Di Pego makes a halfhearted attempt to flesh out a couple of them – like the impossibly shy and insecure girl (Valerie Tian) who is being pursued (stalked, actually) by a classmate (Adam DiMarco) whose attentions are as unsettling as they are unwanted. But these subplots lead only to narrative dead ends.
The main show is provided by Owen and Binoche, both seasoned pros who effectively present their characters despite the flotsam they must wade through. Owen has one terrifically effective moment when Jack finally realizes what an empty shell he has become. Binoche’s Dina – who can no longer hold a brush — shows her pluck by using big mops to create Pollock-y drip paintings. Plus nobody in the business can play bruised beauty as effortlessly as Binoche.
No doubt “Words and Pictures” will be proclaimed a feel-good movie. Well, kinda. Sorta. Maybe if you don’t look too close.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
This IS a minor film.fluff for lovers of love stories,but Clive Owens can do no wrong.he’s a marvelous actor to watch…even in a soft motion picture as this,but Benoche is just walking through her part but when in silence she starts to move her talent forward even struggling to fight the RA that is slowly destroying her art.her performance with Owen is lifeless and not enjoyable to watch.it’s a “little ” film but one I enjoyed watching.