Signis

Take This Waltz

(JPEG)

Canada, 2011, Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby, Directed by Sarah Polley.

Take this Waltz is really a psychological and emotional portrait of a 28 year old woman who has been married for five years, Margot. She is played intensely, with both sadness and joy, by Michelle Williams who has been emerging as a strong actress in a variety of films from Meek’s Cutoff to her turn as Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn.

Margot is married to Lou, an expert cook who is trying out recipes for chicken. Seth Rogen plays Lou as a genial man who loves Margot and is happy to say ‘I love you’. However, the audience senses, as she does, that there is something incomplete in her relationship with her husband. When she meets Daniel (Luke Kirby) at a theme park and then on a plane, she is immediately attracted to him but does not quite know what this attraction is or what it means. While she is attracted to Daniel, she is distracted from Lou.

She seeks out opportunities to talk with Daniel, watch him, since he lives across the street. Daniel is cautious and does not want to do anything improper. However, at a café one afternoon, they have a conversation where a great deal of erotic behaviour is described and relished. Is this where the breakdown of her marriage is consummated or has it been a longer, slower process. On the occasion of their fifth wedding anniversary, Margot and Lou are given a rickshaw ride by Daniel. Their conversation at the meal means that Lou does not grasp what is happening to Margot and to their marriage. When he does realise what is happening, he lets her go - with great regret.

Daniel has moved away, but Margot follows him. The climax of their relationship is offered in a stylized way, to the lyrics and melody of Take This Waltz and a succession of erotic tableaux.

After the excitement comes the ordinariness. Margot gets the opportunity to see Lou again when he calls her to come when his alcoholic sister, Geraldine (Sarah Silverman) has a relapse. Geraldine, however, gets the opportunity to voice her reactions and those of the family to Margot’s behaviour.

We are left with Margot quietly cooking in her kitchen. Sarah Polley has a career as an actress but she also wrote Away from Her, a fine story of an ageing woman with Alzheimer’s Disease. Once again, she has a portrait of a woman, a much younger woman who forgets her life with her husband, away from him.

Peter Malone