Ruby Sparks
(2012)
The problem with
Zoe Kazan’s script for Ruby Sparks
isn’t a lack of laughs, or that it stretches its premise beyond breaking point.
It’s that this little subgenre of “writer creates fantasy world/character and
then learns it ain’t so marvellous” is overly familiar. There is so little that
is new left to draw from this murky pond, at least on the evidence here. In
addition, while Kazan’s moral concerning the unrealistic illusions that (men)
project onto their relationships is a sturdy one, she doesn’t so much gently
hammer home the message as inflict blunt force trauma on the viewer to get it
across.
One could imagine
more subtlety and nuance from, say, Woody Allen. After all, he gave us The Purple Rose of Cairo, in which
fictional characters emerge from a movie and start interacting within the
“real” world. Then there’s Marc Foster’s Stranger
than Fiction, which has a not dissimilar tone to Ruby Sparks but inverts the protagonists. In Ruby Sparks it is the creator, not the creation, whom the plot
revolves around. The mechanism is more overtly a metaphor here too. None of the
meta-commentary of a Last Action Hero.
Paul Dano’s
novelist, Calvin, who wrote a bestseller 10 years ago but has yet to publish a
sophomore effort, finds his writer’s block is er… unblocked when he starts
dreaming of the titular character. He soon discovers that she is not just
fuelling his burst in creativity, however. She becomes tangible. And everything
he types on the page, she does. You can see where this is going right there,
yes? It’s also one of those set-ups where the viewer is conscious, at every
turn, of possible tangents that could be explored - would be explored – if such a conceit were actualised. But, in
order to keep a rein on a premise that could become uncontrollable, much of
this is left dangling.
Indeed, the rigid
focus on the feckless Calvin and his tunnel vision idea of love has a number of
unfortunate side effects. One is that, in story terms, there are a number of
longueurs where it becomes clear we are treading water. The only distractions
from this are some colourful supporting characters, most particularly Annette
Bening and Antonio Banderas as Calvin’s mother and her boyfriend. There’s also
Steve Coogan as a sleazy (now there’s a surprise!) agent and the always-welcome
Elliot Gould as Calvin’s shrink. Chris Messina (seen in the very ropey fourth
season of Damages) has a lot of fun
as Calvin’s brother and confidante.
The other problem
is Dano himself. The actor wanders from scene to scene as if he is suffering
from a terminal bladder complaint, with the result that it’s difficult to
invest in his character or situation. This isn’t a new thing, it’s just the
Dano persona. Kazan is his real world (well, Hollywood, anyway) other half, and
she makes Ruby a decidedly Zooey Deschanel-esque kook (Manic Pixie Dream Girl
is, I understand, the “type”).
On the evidence of
this, Kazan has a promising career as a writer but she needs to resist the urge
to over-egg the pudding. The Ruby freak-out scene, where Calvin types
instruction after instruction that she enacts accordingly, is an actor’s dream
and it is dramatically strong stuff but it represents an easy and inevitable
place for the characters to end up. Nothing in Ruby Sparks really surprises, which is the disappointment. A scene
at a party featuring Deborah Ann Woll (Jessica in True Blood) as Calvin’s ex merely serves to underscore what has
already been established in bold type and enormous font-size (it’s very nice to
see Woll, though).
And, while her
dialogue is frequently very witty, it occasionally reveals itself as cringingly
self-conscious (to wit, “Maybe we knew
each other in another life, or maybe we just go to the same coffee shop”).
Whether the ending
represents Calvin having grown sufficiently not to make the same mistake twice,
or about to do exactly that, is open to debate and no doubt intentionally so. Its
interpretation appears to have provoked a fair amount of debate, but it elicited
a response of caution from me. Even if the “reality” has changed, the image of
Calvin’s fantasy remains the same.
Jonathan Dayton
and Valerie Faris return to the director’s chair(s) for the first time since Little Miss Sunshine. Rather than
creating a bold visual style (although the static camerawork is a signature
choice in itself), the tools they employ most effectively are in editing and
soundtrack. Such an approach was evident in their superior debut but, while it
informs and emphasises the scenario and performances, it does rather scream “quirky
little indie”.
***1/2
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