Family Movie Night
By Karyn Bowman
Image from IMDb.com
Every year, when it gets close to Valentine’s Day I always suggest renting Return to Me. The movie stars David Duchovny and Minnie Driver as two Chicagoans who meet by chance but have a deeper connection than either is aware.
It would complicated to explain but let’s just say it involves a heart transplant and a terrible car accident. The movie was written and directed by Bonnie Hunt who used to be a nurse.
I like the performances by the cast and the sincerity of the script. I know the places where the movie was filmed and love that people get messy. Life is never neat and clean which sometimes needs to be reflected in the movies.
It is a very sweet love story. And that is fine most of the time. However, sometimes, we need something a little sultry. We want to live on the edge just a little bit.
Maybe not as crazy as Something Wild starring Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels in which the yuppie’s life is taken over by the wild woman. It is all fun and games until her ex-husband, who is a bit crazy, returns.
No, I am thinking sultry as in Lauren Bacall. Is she a good girl or a bad girl or is it simply hard to tell. She drinks hard, lives hard, and has her own sense of right and wrong. Throughout it all she is beautiful in a mysterious sort of way.
Some of you might be asking who is Lauren Bacall. Some might remember her as the mother in the Barbara Streisand movie, The Mirror Has Two Faces. But those of us with longer memories have seen her paired up with her first husband, Humphrey Bogart. She and Bogey were a part of the Rat Pack in the beginning. They lived the glamorous life in a Hollywood that is far different from today.
Poster Image from IMDb.com
Recently, some tv show featured a clip in which a beautiful woman flirted with a man by asking him if he knew how to whistle. Her dark sultry voice lets him know she is there for the taking but he has to put in a little effort. He only had to whistle.
“You know how to do that, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”
That line from To Have or Have Not stops most men in their tracks, especially when delivered by Bacall in her film debut looking like the beautiful model that she was at the time.
Her sultry presence was paired again with Bogart in The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo. Bogart and Bacall were a very popular movie couple with the movie-going public. While the story might focus of the darker side of life, these noir films also featured deep rich characters.
None of these are kids friendly in regards to context. Most kids simply do not have the patience to sit through these old movies. But for film buffs, it is a chance to relive movie-making in a period that seems to be so much more glamorous than the current time.
Until next week, see you in the rental aisle.
Notes from Rumbly Cottage 