Feast of Love (2007)

Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

One great movie really. A drama showing several parallel life stories that intertwine. The motives represented in this story may have been often used in film art, but it doesn't matter at all, they do not diminish the quality of it , and the way how film was made, the plot and dissolution, gives it a completely unique seal, so that the film is one of the top for each recommendation.

This film reminds me of why I generally don't like ensemble movies. You have to be able to invest in each of the subplots, or you get bored. Now, once in a while I luck out and stumble into an ensemble film that I can buy into, but not often.Here, I couldn't get interested in all of the subplots. Not that there was anything wrong with any of the stories, but they all just didn't interest me.We start with Bradley (Greg Kinnear) who gets dumped by his lesbian wife and begins a relationship with a real estate agent. Okay, I bought into this subplot.Then there's Oscar and Chloe. He's a formed druggie. They do a porn film to make money. Sorry, just couldn't get into it. Nothing wrong with the story. Just didn't interest me.And then there's Morgan Freeman's mixed marriage with Jane Alexander. I found this part of the film very interesting.But, that means a third of the film didn't interest me.So, my only warning here is to be sure you like ensemble stories.

I happen to watch the movie lately .. and loved it. Yes .. its a bit predictable , but is a very simply put pleasant movie. I would rate it 10 for a DVD rent. Worth spending 2 hours at home , with your loved ones. Morgan Freeman is definitely the high point. Its funny, tense, sad ,complex and is definitely about LOVE. The acting is superb and subtle. Alexa Davalos looks really beautiful in this movie (i had seen her in defiance earlier). I could not much weak links in the entire movie .. yes there are a few nude scenes (slightly explicit) , but they don't stand out since they form an integral part of the story. One of the few movies which i did not want to end.

We follow the intimate relationships between Harry and Esther, Bradley and Kathryn, Chloe and Oscar, Diana and Bradley, Jenny and Kathryn, Diana and David, and Bradley and Margit. I guess that justifies the movie's title, but it's a bit much to expand on in a little over and hour and a half. We hardly get to know any of these people more than superficially.Bradley (a proprietor of a small coffee shop in Portland, Oregon) is at the center. Before the movie is over he has gone through two women and is on his third. Diana describes him as not stupid or inconsiderate, not obnoxious or violent, not boring, not a bad dresser, not unemployed, and not unhandsome. She also remarks that an absence of disqualifiers is a rare thing. But in the end that is not enough for her, and it is not enough for us. What is it that makes Bradley interesting? We do not see. He is supposed to be an artist by avocation, but we never see any of his work. We don't know what interests him besides his feeling that "love is everything."After over six years of marriage Kathryn leaves Bradley for Jenny. When Jenny picks Kathryn up in her jeep and says, "Oh, man, we're going to have adventures, you and me," we are interested and would like to see *that* movie. But that's about the last we see of those two. Instead we go back to the rather uninteresting Bradley. There are other occasional scenes where the movie comes to life, like scenes between Diana and David--getting to know those two would also have proved interesting. Who are all these people? We never get beyond the surface. Perhaps we get to know the story of an older professor (Morgan Freeman) and his wife as well as any other, but it gets a bit tiresome seeing Freeman pop up every ten minutes or so dispensing wisdom and philosophy. Then there is Oscar's ridiculous alcoholic father who is jealous of Oscar's relationship with Chloe to the point of threatening her with a knife several times, the last time because he blames her for his son's death from a congenital heart defect. That doesn't make much sense.The thing that most impressed me were the lighting and framing, particularly in scenes of couples in ordinary settings. There are also several sex scenes that are nicely filmed.