MOVIE REVIEW : Misfits and Misadventures in ‘Beatrice’

The French actress Irene Jacob has a real heartbreaker’s face; with her succulent lips, tossing pixie hair and sparkling eyes, she easily seduces the camera. Better than almost all her young contemporaries, Jacob, who won the 1991 Cannes acting grand prize as Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Veronique,” suggests the vibrant spontaneity of another human being, one you love to watch.

But not, unfortunately, in “Trusting Beatrice” (Laemmle’s Monica). Nothing wears faster than winsomeness belabored or blitheness contrived. And those are the curses of this well-intentioned tale of romance between a hapless Providence, R.I., gardener and the illegal French immigrant girl of his dreams. “Beatrice” means to soar and sing, but it’s blocky, awkward, forced.

Part of the problem is thematic. Part is simple pacing. And part is the fizzy chemistry between the leading players: Jacob as the devil-may-care Beatrice de Lucio and Mark Evan Jacobs, as shambling, luckless Claude Dewey--who begins the film by discovering his original sweetheart in flagrante delicto, and then accidentally burns down his own house.

Beatrice is a life force. When she sees the Atlantic, she immediately strips and runs in. She’s also homeless; her part seems calculated to nibble at all our liberal pieties. And, when she shows up with a 4-year-old Cambodian orphan girl named Seap Sok (Nady Meas) in a little red wagon, the movie’s shamelessness is complete.

The Dewey family is comfortably off: neurotic Mama Dewey (Charlotte Moore), morose Dad Dewey (Pat McNamara) and silent, demented Grandpa Dewey (Leonardo Cimino), who puts broccoli on his head at dinner in a vain attempt to loosen everyone up. Is their silliness validated by the fact that they can afford it? The movie, which is about misfits finding one another, instead suggests that stupidity is a kind of state of grace, that the barmier you are, the nearer you are to bliss.

It’s tempting to say that the entire film revolves around what critic Damon Knight used to call an “idiot plot”--a plot than only functions because everyone involved is an idiot--but the filmmakers might argue that these people aren’t stupid; they’re just trapped in social conventions and structures that make them seem stupid. And it would also be unfair to the non-dopes in the story, like Samuel Wright as black psychiatrist Dr. White and Steve Buscemi, as Claude’s harried yuppie attorney, Danny, who, not coincidentally, give the film’s best performances.

“Beatrice” is the writer-directorial debut of playwright Cindy Lou Johnson (“Brilliant Traces,” “The Years”). But it doesn’t feel like a playwright’s film. The dialogue is one of the film’s biggest weaknesses. Careless love, rapture and romance came in for a beating in the movies of the Bottom Line ‘80s, and judging from “Trusting Beatrice” (MPAA rated PG) they haven’t quite recovered. Watching it, we’re much like Claude, early in the film, when he answers the door to a Girl Scout selling cookies and then slams the door, only to hear her caterwauling in the corridor. How can we refuse a movie that bangs on our door and offers us whimsy, goofy romance, Bernd Heinl cinematography and Irene Jacob? The problem with buying cookies, however, is that you may have to toss them later on.

‘Trusting Beatrice’

Irene Jacob: Beatrice De Lucio

Mark Evan Jacobs: Claude Dewey

Charlotte Moore: Mrs. Dewey

Steve Buscemi: Danny

A Castle Hill Productions presentation of a J. J. Films production. Director-screenwriter Cindy Lou Johnson. Producer Mark Evan Jacobs, Johnson. Co-producer Diana Phillips. Cinematographer Bernd Heinl. Editor Camilla Toniolo. Costumes Isis Mussenden. Music Stanley Myers. Production design Cynthia Kay Charette. Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG.