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Write on the money
STRANGER THAN FICTION
Directed by Mark Forster
Certificate 12A
EMMA Thompson has a reputation for picking carefully the films she chooses to act in.
So why has she shown up in a flick alongside the comedian Will Ferrell, whose career highlights have so far included such celluloid disasters as Bewitched and Elf?
You would think his inclusion automatically would have made her say thanks, but no thanks.
But Stranger than Fiction not only illuminates Thompson’s many graces as an actor, it also shows Ferrell in a whole new light.
As tax agent Harold Crick, Ferrell (pictured) shines. His ability comes through. This is his finest film to date.
Crick begins to hear a voice: a voice that is narrating his life, providing a soundtrack to his actions. His first assumption is that he is going through some kind of episode. A psychiatrist tells him he may be experiencing some kind of schizophrenic breakdown.
But then he realises that the story he is hearing in his head is like a novel – a novel which sees him as the the main character – face a tragic ending.
It so transpires that successful writer Kay Eiffel (Thompson) is penning a novel – and Crick is her leading man. What ever she puts down on to her electric typewriter happens to him. A disturbing thought when you consider Eiffel has a habit of killing off her main characters at the end of each novel.
The pair are unaware of each other. But through her work, she begins to make Crick see his life in a different way – and make some changes for the better, including falling in love with Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal) whose accounts he is auditing.
Throw in the hat Dustin Hoffman as the English professor who loves Eifell’s fiction and provides a guiding hand to Crick as he tries to understand his predicament, and rapper Queen Latifah as Eiffel’s assistant, and you have a cast whose chemistry lightens up each scene.
Director Marc Foster has created a love story that works like a grown-up version of Groundhog Day. It is a many pronged tale and at once both dramatic and comedic. The themes of love and death are sensitively explored, and there is a profound message hidden behind the actions the characters eventually decide they must undertake.
But above all, this is a film that has a hugely satisfying ending and will leave you feeling as if you have just feasted on the cinematic equivalent of an eight-course cordon bleu meal.
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