Wonderful movie | Rich in Love | Albert Finney, Jill Clayburgh

no title | Rich in Love | Albert Finney, Jill Clayburgh

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	• Rich in Love Albert Finney, Jill Clayburgh MGM (Video & DVD), 1997 average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Star Turn For Albert Finney

RICH IN LOVE boasts a great ensemble cast, but it's probably not a disservice to the other actors in this 1993 heartwarmer to say that the film BELONGS to Albert Finney. To say nothing of the fact that his is absolutely the best Southern accent of any of the non-(US)Southern born actors in the film. What is it about the Brits ready mastery of Dixiespeak anyway? OK, OK, aside from Albert Finney in this movie, I can actually only think of Vivien Leigh's flawless turn as Miz Scarlett in 1939.

So maybe it has more to do with being a huge talent than with one's nationality. Still such solid performers as Piper Laurie and Jill Clayburgh kind of wander in and out of their accents here. Finney, however, is just about perfection here. And not just linguistically. He inhabits his role as the chronically perplexed retiree Warren Odom, who is attempting make sense of his wife's sudden abandonment of him and his high school aged daughter (Kathryn Erbe). More oblivious than truly insensitive, he ultimately has to come to terms with the fact that although he and his wife still love each other in their way, after 27 years, they can no longer live together.

Erbe also turns in a remarkable performance--especially considering that the actress, who was in her mid-twenties at the time the film was made, so convincingly plays a precocious high school senior. Also impressive is the film's one true Southerner, Suzy Amis as her impetuous newly wed (and ambivalently pregnant) sister. It's a lovingly dysfunctional Southern family, one that ultimately comes together in its clumsy, lopsided way. No easy answers here, but everybody grows up a little bit over the course of the film's two hours. And maybe that's the best you can hope for.

RICH IN LOVE doesn't make any grandiose statements, and that's all to the good. It's one of those "little movies" that somehow manages to reveal a few great truths about the human condition. And it offers a great performance by Albert Finney. Coincidentally, I recently also caught his follow-up film, THE BROWNING VERSION, as well. It's difficult to imagine two more divergent roles than the garrulous Southerner he plays here and the reserved English Classics teacher he portrayed in the latter film. He has a remarkable range, one that goes beyond a mere facility in mastering accents. His is a much deeper mastery indeed.

Nominated five times for an Academy Award, Finney has never won. His last nomination was in 2000 for a solid but certainly not stellar turn in ERIN BROCKOVICH. I guess neither RICH IN LOVE nor THE BROWNING VERSION were big enough to merit the Academy's attention, but his work in both those films was infinitely more subtle, and at the same time more commanding, than his role as Julia Roberts' boss in that megahit.

And people ask me why I don't take the Oscars seriously.

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Wonderful movie

This movie will appeal to all people who have "a couple" of years of marriage behind them. It is a story of a family falling apart as "love has come to its conclusion". After 27 years of marriage time has changed: All the members of the family still love each other but in different ways. Mother and father live apart but still respect each other. The two daughters slowly find their own way - one through pregnancy, the other through the painful teen years.

Do not expect a stringent story line. This are rather various shots of family life - but well taken. Here, the talks between the father and his younger daughter stick out, especially when the father admits to his daughter that he had never found a way to talk to her as her mother had monopolized her. And he confesses that if she would have been a son it might have been different. But now that the mother was gone he finally came to appreciate having a daughter (in fact he has two).

Younger people might not enjoy the film as they will not (no offence) understand the message of the film.

Also recommendable: the wonderful scenary of the South Carolinian coast area. Wonderful impressions. A film with a lot of emotions.

So, if you are 35 and above, have children and ... buy the film.

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Wonderful ensemble cast headed by Albert Finney - beautiful setting in Charleston, South Carolina, with long, sweeping shots of an antebellum mansion. But I disagree with the film's premise - "We took love to its conclusion"; ergo it's OK for Mother to leave family behind and start a new life. How selfish. I am not giving anything away here as that is how the movie opens, not ends. And after all these years, there was such a memorable scene in the kitchen with Finney, that I still remember it with clarity. He needs comfort food, and for him that is a mayonnaise and potato chip sandwich on something like Wonder Bread.

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Love the movie, And I Want it on DVD

I absolutely love this movie, and MGM needs to get off their can and release this on DVD. My VCR broke, I'm not buying another one and MGM so kindly made this movie copy-protected, so now I can't even get it transferred to DVD on my own. I guess MGM has until the time it comes on AMC or Turner and then hello DVD recorder and goodbye VHS (it's not like the DVD release is gonna have extras anyway)