Correction appended.
Grade: C
Bottom line: Dull as dishwater, but hairstylist Peter Tothpal nails Diane Lane’s dull Southern suburban ‘do.
I can’t say I’ve noticed a more appropriate haircut for any character or actress in a movie this year than the style Peter Tothpal crafted for Diane Lane in Nights in Rodanthe. It’s that short, shoulder-length cut with blonde highlights one finds on a lot of upper-middle-class Caucasian women in the suburban South, one that suggests yoga lessons after an anxious morning sending the kids to school.
Lane’s haircut is a sign that the actress is perfectly cast for the bland sentimentality of Nights in Rodanthe, based on a novel by The Notebook author Nicholas Sparks. Seeing her master a caricature that she’s played in other films might be the most entertaining aspect of the otherwise dull, perfunctory Rodanthe. In this film, like in Under the Tuscan Sun and Must Love Dogs, Lane is the kind of wronged, middle-aged woman whose constant revealing of self-history mixed with peppy humor and self-pity is squirm inducing.
Lane plays Adrienne Willis, a separated mother of two, whose husband (Christopher Meloni) announces that he wants to get back together. She takes the weekend to think it over, while she manages her best girrrrrrlfriend’s (Viola Davis, playing another variation on the stereotypical black best friend often used as a shortcut for “soul” in Hollywood romances) rarely-visited North Carolina beachside inn. Conveniently, the moody and attractive Paul Flannner (Richard Gere), a recently disgraced plastic surgeon, is the only guest, just as a huge hurricane hits the beach. The two find love, lessons are learned, and James Franco has some scenes as Gere’s surgeon son, but, as with any good romantic drama, the love affair can never truly last. To paraphrase Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, this is how these movies keep their own kind of authenticity: By having something prevent the characters from staying together, the movie both preserves the love affair as something pure (before the characters grow tired of one another), and at the same time, acknowledges that a movie romance can never last.
Rodanthe is the second feature-film from George C. Wolfe (his first, Lackawanna Blues, premiered on HBO), the acclaimed former director of the Public Theater in New York. Though the film doesn’t have much visual appeal, the actors bring occasional humanity and flare to an otherwise saccharine script.
After the hurricane hits the house, Lane, surveying the damage from the beach, picks up a skateboard on the ground and awkwardly twirls it as she talks about her kids; it’s pretty weird, yet the actress has conviction. And Gere amusingly drops character in one scene, or perhaps shows some genuine human reaction to Lane’s sentimental motor mouth, when, as she shows him a picture of her children, he gives a brusque, uninterested, “Yeah.” It’s something an average person might do when they’re bored – and it might be one of the more human moments in the movie.
In Rodanthe, like in some other romantic dramas, the film’s interest in the characters’ passion is matched by its interest in interior decorating. The interior of the beach inn has the look of a Southern Living spread: an aqua blue kitchen, strands of red peppers hanging from the walls and white French doors and windows. The interiors are pretty, but on the outside, the inn is creepy: Like the eponymous home in another slightly strange romantic drama, The Lake House, the house lacks a clean structure. The three ramshackle floors jut over each other, looking ready to fall at any moment. The movie doesn’t particularly use the location in an interesting way– in one wide shot before Lane and Gere realize they’re meant for each other, the two characters, who have rooms one floor apart, stand on their balconies, overlooking the ocean. Maybe that’s a metaphor. Maybe that’s shabby chic. Speaking of shabby chic, man, I really want a chipped, blue door as a coffee table. So maybe Nights in Rodanthe worked as wish fulfillment for me. While others may have admired Gere’s bland mug or Lane’s haircut, I wanted the furniture.
Correction, 11:46 a.m., Sept. 27: The original version of this article misstated what state the movie took place in.
