Twilightfa
Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.
Kaydan Christian
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
Philippa
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
misctidsandbits
If the characters had been able to get over themselves, the viewer would have been able to breathe easier. The long looks – forget your lines? The oh-so-serious weighing of feelings, especially, in Fay – grow up, kid. I think it's called analysis paralysis. Her brother had her number. Where does all that probative introspection get her? It's good she rallied around her mother when needed, but was it really necessary to spin into withdrawal? Lash out at Tom when he calls? She's a baby. Someone really should have taken Tom's temperature. I think he was sick or was he just sleep walking? Just kind of drifts into things, including marriage. Use the brain. Get a pulse. Now, put the two together. The kinky Indian music was too strange. Maybe the mermaid idea was considered an artsy touch as well. These are supposed to be fairly adult people who hold down real jobs. Their courtship and relating revolve mainly around the initial newness of meeting and cohabiting. Pretty flimsy deal they got going here. Not surprising that it doesn't weather the first ill wind that blows its way. I guess their parents failed them along the way, but what else is new? You are supposed to acquire some life skills beyond that on your own. You're grown up now (40ish, in his case), so why can't you handle anything? Where's the strength for someone else? Consumed on little me, actually. Good luck on the marriage ("I'm so happy!"). Unfortunately, it takes a lot more than that. Oh, please finally get with it, or just go back home and settle into sucking your thumb in earnest.This is a downer about two losers likely to remain that way.
Chad Shiira
More mermaids, please. Fay(Emilia Fox) is supposed to like mermaids, but the filmmaker shows disinterest in the mythical creatures of the deep by its very negation from the museum curator's interior life. The mermaid, who is often alone, describes Fay's emotional life. Mermaids are sirens; solitary creatures who lure lonely sailors with their beauty and oceanic love songs. It's a visual motif that needs to be in the film. A filmmaker with an understanding of Irish folklore would exploit Fay's passion to the hilt. When her love affair with Tom Avery(Bruce Greenwood) goes awry, that's when "The Republic of Love" needs the half-woman, half-fish inside Faye to come out of its watery environs. She is a romantic. A mermaid. Late in the film, she watches a documentary about eels, which would've made a stronger impression on the viewer had the mermaid angle been better exploited. The realities of the sea(eels exist; mermaids don't) mirrors the reality of her parents' marriage, and the reality of her godfather's mortality(mermaids are immortal; humans are not). But the filmmaker never allows Fay to be a mermaid. The filmmaker seems to keep the Irish nature of "The Republic of Love" largely in the closet. Instead, for some inexplicable reason, mournful Indian music on the soundtrack describes Fay's grief, even though, earlier in "The Republic of Love", it's her former lover who rented the Bollywood musical. She had fallen asleep. Indian cinema disinterest her. But this filmmaker doesn't care and takes a page out of the Mira Nair handbook(she transformed "Vanity Fair" into something that lovers of the William Makepeace Thackery couldn't recognize), nevertheless, by grafting her indigenous culture onto a foreign one, which probably ill-serves the Carol Shields novel. The late Canadian writer shouldn't be punished for writing about white people. This filmmaker wants to integrate Shields' imagination.
Balthazar-5
The problem with 'Republic of Love' is that it is a film made because it has a good filmmaker, not a good script. There was totally inadequate attention to detail in the drawing of the lead characters, and the result is a sprawl that is tied together by a good visual sense, not a good narrative one. If you are making a political allegory, that can be fine, but if it is a love story, you are sunk. I kept thinking about all of those publicly funded organisations which had bank-rolled the film and, in spite of my leanings towards the public support of fine filmmakers, found myself thinking that people who were risking their own money would not have jumped with such a weak script (and barely adequate cast...)
willthind
The Republic of Love sadly confirms my suspicion that Deepa Mehta is a director of limited talent and vision. The film is dramatically and emotionally inert - a far, far cry from Carol Shields source novel. Certain sequences - for example, the lamentable nonsense about mermaids in the museum - are little short of embarrassing, with Mehta seemingly unable to construct convincing relationships. Certain sets look as if they were built on very limited budgets. The whole thing isn't helped by weak decisions in the casting department. Emilia Fox is cold and fails to convince us of any of her character's passion. Bruce Greenwood struggles to convince us of his heterosexuality. And Edward Fox is - well - just plain terrible. His accent sounds as it was trained at the Dick Van Dyke School of Elocution. A major misfire. Avoid.
