Review: In the Land of Women

The Kasdan family of filmmakers has been busy lately. We learned this week that Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, The Accidental Tourist) is scripting a remake of Clash of the Titans. His son Jake's film The TV Set was released in theaters earlier this month. And his son Jon Kasdan's feature writing/directing debut, In the Land of Women, opens this weekend. The title may sound vaguely like a Fifties science-fiction movie, but the film is actually a low-concept, low-key drama about a young man's encounters with a variety of ordinary women in one neighborhood.

In the Land of Women opens cute, with porn-movie screenwriter Carter (Adam Brody) being dumped by his gamine supermodel girlfriend Sofia (Elena Anaya) while young women approach her seeking autographs. Devastated, Carter decides he wants a change of scene, and since his grandmother Phyllis (Olympia Dukakis) claims to be dying, he travels from LA to Michigan to stay with her for awhile. Meanwhile, across the street from Phyllis's house, Sarah (Meg Ryan) has just discovered that she might have breast cancer, and breaks the news to her teenage daughter Lucy (Kristen Stewart). Carter gets to know both the mother and daughter, and provides a sounding board for their troubles, while also mourning his relationship with Sofia. Naturally, he gathers important life lessons, or at least good writing material, while also adding a little magic to their lives.

And that's it, in terms of storyline. There are a lot of scenes in which someone is confessing feelings, or traumatic events from the past. This is supposed to be a character-driven film, but few of the characters are complex or interesting. the romantic undertones ranged from unbelievable to creepy. Carter's grandmother Phyllis comes off as more of a plot device than a character. We never quite know the extent to which she is suffering from mental disorders, and her problems are often soft-pedaled or played for comedy. Carter is obviously taking care of her, but we see less of his interaction with her and more with the women across the street. There's a younger, precocious child to provide comic relief, and a distant husband/father to contrast with Carter. I didn't like the way in which the breast-cancer situation was handled in this film; it seemed too Hollywood, too patly resolved. The last scene is also a little too twee for me.

Brody is one of the best reasons to see this movie -- he makes Carter much more interesting to watch than the dialogue would merit. He looks like a young Dan Ackroyd and sounds like Matthew Broderick at times, and there's something oddly compelling about him. The rest of the cast gives uneven performances. Ryan seems barely recognizable as herself except for the trademark hair. And Stewart is unable to make Lucy more than a petulant teen whose big confessional scenes slow the movie to a crawl. Overall, the dialogue sounds fake -- would anyone really ever say "I'm a last-word freak"? And wouldn't you want to shake them, if they did? Phyllis's occasional use of four-letter words seems meant only for shock value, and not in line with her character.

Some of the comic moments in the film worked well: I liked the conversation Carter has with the porn-film director about the script, and the gag about Carter's mom's high-school crush is funny. I wish we'd seen more of Carter's mom, in fact, who was played by JoBeth Williams. The one scene in which she appears is both amusing and realistic. In the Land of Women made me want to watch a movie about real women -- I was reminded of the far superior film Sherman's March, the personal documentary in which Ross McElwee travels around the country talking to various women he knows. (The documentary is too long, but otherwise very good and definitely worth a DVD rental.)

In the Land of Women is the kind of movie that gives the term "chick flick" a bad reputation -- I'm surprised it didn't contain the requisite bonding-over-ice-cream scene, or the multigenerational-women-dance-to-Motown sequence. I like strong female characters who do more than talk to some guy as though he were a magical catalyst. The women in Kasdan's cinematic land seem only to exist to provide life lessons for the male protagonist -- it's difficult to imagine them having lives of their own when Carter's not in the neighborhood. Compare this movie to Albert Brooks's film Mother, another film that examines parent-child relationships, but which offers a rich and entertaining character in the title role. In the Land of Women appears to be someone's idea of a film that appeals to women, but women with sense like movies with more depth and storyline. At least this woman does.