Widows' Peak. - movie reviews

National Review, June 27, 1994 by John Simon

In People have been comparing the inept little Widows' Peak to Enchanted April, Mike Newell and Peter Barnes's delightful comedy. Nothing could be farther off the mark. Widows' Peak was directed by John Irvin, an undistinguished action director, and written by Hugh Leonard, the Irish writer who, except for his charming play Da, has produced mostly hack work. But this hokey, heavyhanded jape features Joan Plowright, who, in her current phase as Britain's premier comic dowager, is equaling in her own way the achievement of her late husband, Laurence Olivier.

The story takes place in a sleepy Irish town during the unroaring Twenties, where Mrs. Doyle Counihan, the formidable matriarch in the hilltop mansion, has populated her entire hillside with her vassals: black, wraithlike widows who tend their husbands' graves, gawk at anything gawkable at, and gossip - not necessarily in that order of frequency. We meet Mr. Clancy, the local pain-full dentist, whose idea of anaesthesia is getting tanked up on whisky before he operates. He is in love with Miss O'Hare (Mia Farrow), the only spinster among all these widows, who for some mysterious reason is allowed to grow roses in a cottage provided with all necessitiess by Mrs. DC. The latter also has a grown live-in son, Godfrey, a rarity in Widows' Peak. He claims only to pretend that he is a bumbler, so his Mammy" will keep him, and fancies himself a dapper fellow loaded with skills.

Into this burg comes to live, for no discernible reason, a smashing, sophisticated army widow, young Edwina Broome (Natasha Richardson), who, though English, claims to have been living in the United States, where she has become thoroughly Americanized. A bit of a vamp, she promptly sets her sights on the affluent Godfrey, with his all too willing cooperation. Strange animosities and intrigues spring up among the three principal ladies, none of them very amusing, let alone absorbing. Yet one wonders feebly what the glamorous Edwina, who drives her own car, wears scarlet lipstick and frocks, and smokes incessantly, seeks in these unlikely purlieus. A visiting Englishman even recognizes her as someone he knew at Antibes.

There are some passable anti-English jokes, and a couple of genuinely comic scenes that, given their paucity, I shall not even hint at. It all works up to a double switcheroo most people will have anticipated; neither Ashley Rowe's indifferent photography of the lovely exteriors nor Carl Davis's uncharacteristically unresourceful music contributes to the meager fun. Mr. Irvin's direction is merely perfunctory, but no more so than the script, which does not even make much of its better possibilities, such as Miss O'Hare's rose garden or Godfrey's work on repairing defective animal traps.

Still, Miss Plowright is a pleasure to behold and hear as she lays about the mediocre material with her native wit and charm. Mia Farrow manages Irish spinsterhood with amazing ease, but cannot make a silk purse out of thick Irish stew. Adrian Dunbar, better at playing conmen, does passably by Godfrey, and Gerald McSorley does nicely by a slippery lawyer (if that isn't a pleonasm). Jim Broadbent, a solid comedian, extracts everything possible from the amorous dentist. But Natasha Richardson is a huge disappointment. Though her American accent has become impeccable, all else about her is self-indulgent, overdone, and strangely amateurish. There are collectors out there with their private museums of celluloid horrors into which this performance will be duly inducted.