Where the Heart Is Directed by John Boorman Starring Dabney Coleman, Uma Thurman, Suzy Amis, Crispin Glover, Christopher Plummer and Joanna Cassidy A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Christmas with "Ally," "Raymond," "King of Queens" and "7th Heaven" Now Showing New video releases for Dec. 15 ___________________ Are you a film buff? Search BarnesandNoble.com for books about movies! ___________________ Y E S T E R D A Y "Shakespeare in Love" Reviewed by Laura Miller Ben Affleck upstages Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes in this clever but clichéd romantic comedy (12/11/98) "A Simple Plan" Reviewed by Charles Taylor Sam Raimi's first hard-hitting film offers a brutally realistic portrayal of what can happen when upright people take one wrong turn (12/11/98) "Star Trek: Insurrection" Reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir Nostalgia ain't what it used to be (12/11/98) R E C E N T_. M O V I E S "Psycho" Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Williams Gus Van Sant's retelling of a Hitchcock classic may not be anything new, but it's still just as shocking (12/04/98) "Little Voice" Reviewed by Charles Taylor Jane Horrocks saves this annoyingly noisy movie with uncanny impressions of Garland, Dietrich and Monroe (12/04/98) Jerry Springer: Ringmaster Reviewed by Gary Kaufman The movie is every bit as loud and raunchy as the television show -- so what's not to like? (12/02/98) Home Movies By Charles Taylor "Matilda": A smart, funny fantasy for bookworms of all ages (11/30/98) "A Bug's Life" Reviewed by Janelle Brown With it's much-anticipated follow-up to "Toy Story," Pixar conquers in the animated bug battle (11/25/98) BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

-------[ H O M E_.M O V I E S_.B Y_.C H A R L E S_.T A Y L O R ]___ ------_________family matters_________ JOHN BOORMAN'S ENCHANTED COMEDY "WHERE THE HEART IS" SINGS THE PRAISES OF HEARTH AND HOME. John Boorman's charmed family comedy "Where the Heart Is" is an attempt to create something like the atmosphere of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in modern New York, with a deserted lot in Brooklyn serving as the enchanted Athenian wood. And at the center of the movie is a Lear-like figure given the chance to redeem his folly and enter his kingdom once again. Boorman's previous movie, "Hope and Glory," a child's-eye view of Blitz London, explained how his vision was shaped: Who could settle for ordinary life after growing up in the middle of such an adventure, all the while anchored by the security of a loving family? The characters in "Where the Heart Is" don't become a family -- "bodies turning in harmonious orbit," to use the director's phrase -- until they transform their world into a place where magic can live. Released in 1990, "Where the Heart Is" has some of the madness of Boorman's earlier films, many of them mythic visions of quest and adventure. But it's shot through with the expansive, generous humor he unveiled in "Hope and Glory." Boorman has complete faith that he can bring off this fantastical enterprise. The film has a high-flown giddiness, like a toy that Boorman keeps effortlessly aloft. The opening credits set the tone perfectly: a pen-and-ink sketch of the Manhattan skyline colored in by an artist's hand until it's almost an abstract swirl of color. It's the kind of picture an exceptionally gifted child might paint. Boorman then dissolves to a beautifully detailed brick building, giving us a few seconds to drink it in before it implodes and crumbles before our eyes. The destruction is the work of Stewart McBain (Dabney Coleman), the demolitions expert who waves his hands rhapsodically before the whole works like a delighted orchestra conductor. He's only really happy when he's bringing things down. Stewart's sour nature comes out fully when demonstrators succeed in getting the Dutch House -- a Brooklyn tenement that happens to be the last building on a lot he's clearing for a lucrative construction deal -- declared a historical landmark. "Where the Heart Is" is the story of what results from Stewart's lousy day. After butting heads with his daughter Daphne (Uma Thurman), his unemployed son, Jimmy (David Hewlett), and his wife, Jean (Joanna Cassidy), he attends the art show where his other daughter, Chloe (the translucent Suzy Amis), unveils her senior project: a film of her trompe l'oeil paintings with live, painted models blending into her backgrounds, and prominently featuring both Chloe and her sister, nude. Mortified, and deciding his kids need a lesson in the real world, Stewart deposits the three of them at the Dutch House and announces that this is their new home; from now on they'll have to manage on their own. It takes a little while to see where Boorman is headed with this material because his sensibility appears at first to be divided. The shots of imploding buildings are rapt images of the aesthetic beauty of destruction, and Stewart seems to embrace Boorman's notion that creation begins in destruction (as it does in the rubble of "Hope and Glory," or in the chaos that confronts Patricia Arquette as an American caught in the turmoil of Burma in "Beyond Rangoon"). And when Stewart lectures his kids on how they need to learn to survive and exiles them from their comfortable, modern home, he seems to be echoing the director's favorite theme -- the need to keep your spirit alive in the soulless modern world. But it's Stewart who remains in the world that Boorman finds so stifling. "Where the Heart Is" turns out not to be the story of how his kids accept the thin gruel of reality, but how they turn their new world into a banquet by relying on the very things their father hoped to scare out of them: fancifulness, willfulness, refusal to do work that doesn't interest them. What's wonderful about Daphne, Chloe and Jimmy is how impractical they are. They hit on the idea of each convincing a friend to join the household and pay rent. But only Jimmy's stockbroker pal Tom (Dylan Walsh) can do that. Chloe's friend Lionel (Crispin Glover), a budding fashion designer working on his first collection, and Daphne's contribution, The Shit (Christopher Plummer), a shambling, hoarse-voiced old bum and former magician, have zilch. And when Chloe accepts an offer she originally turned down to create a calendar for an insurance company, she spends the last of their money buying paint. But her project turns out to be the heart of the movie, Boorman's metaphor for an artist's ability to turn work for hire into a vehicle for personal expression. (That has special meaning here. After agreeing to finance the movie if Boorman changed the setting from London to New York, Touchstone, unable to comprehend what they got for their money, dumped it on the market and sent the director copies of only the negative reviews.) Nothing Boorman and his production team come up with is more amazing than Chloe's paintings, which were created by artist Timna Woollard. In them, Chloe becomes a Picasso, Lionel a Rousseau native, Jimmy a Cupid with his arrow pointed at the heart of a Botticelli nude. Chloe's paintings become a metaphor for the way the spirit let loose in the Dutch House gathers everyone into its embrace, including Stewart and Jean. There's something wonderfully egalitarian in the way circumstances conspire to bring everyone down, and something instinctively generous in the way they all wind up at the Dutch House. Seen at night from the outside, the Dutch House looks like a refuge on some desolate plain. Inside, the rooms glow with soft, warm lighting while the assembled group dances or lounges around, talking and laughing. The movie is a feast of felicities, like Linda Matheson's marvelous costumes -- gowns of lace and velvet and crepe, lamé capes, bandannas and beads, plumed hats, even a tri-con trimmed in gold braid -- and Carol Spier's production design, which gives the Dutch House an air of baroque decrepitude. Peter Suschitzky shoots the smoldering scrap heaps of the urban wasteland that surrounds the house as if they were a primitive place the characters have journeyed to where they reclaim the spark they've lost. Each of those characters is awash in a particular affectation, which is what Boorman loves about them. "Where the Heart Is" has some of the best ensemble comic acting of any film since Robert Altman's heyday. Thurman and Amis, both terrifically funny and stunningly beautiful, embody the picture's chic and graceful soul. Squeezing out words like "couture" between his pursed lips, Glover has an almost Victorian demureness. Plummer gives a loose-limbed performance alive with the pleasure of an actor discovering the tricks still left in him. And Coleman goes beyond his trademark gleeful nastiness to delve into a man trying to discover who he is after a lifetime of false security, and trying to express the wonder and gratitude that the thought of his children fills him with. Written with his daughter, the late Telsche Boorman, "Where the Heart Is" was intended as an affectionate and amused portrait of Boorman's own children and their friends. What he came up with was a poetic farce about the mysterious bonds of family, and the way those bonds are strengthened as they are allowed to become more flexible. The family values the film embraces are individuality rather than self-effacement, instinct rather than tradition, and sensuous, uncorseted joy. The film's finale, set on a rural riverside estate that has the idyllic tranquillity of paradise regained, has the characters twirling around the dance floor, changing partners until each is suitably paired off. And in the midst of them is Stewart, with the awkwardness of a man trying to re-learn the steps he'd almost forgotten, but the relief of one who finds himself back in the dance. 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