MOVIE REVIEW : ‘House of Cards’ Has Moments but Falls

“House of Cards” (Westside Pavilion, Beverly Center Cineplex) is the latest in the “Lorenzo’s Oil”/ Mother Knows Best genre in which a parent defies traditional medical wisdom in treating her mysteriously ailing infant.

As such, the film projects a powerful and original vision, only to undercut it constantly by a trite and tedious battle of wills between the mother (Kathleen Turner) and a child psychologist (Tommy Lee Jones). It is further undermined by a persistent aura of contrivance and a crucial lack of clarity. Since “House of Cards” actually gets somewhere, it’s too bad it wasn’t thought out more fully.

Turner plays Ruth Matthews, a wife and mother who witnessed her husband falling to his death from a pyramid in Mexico while on some kind of archeological project. (The professions of husband and wife aren’t clear; production notes tell us they’re architects).

Just before returning home to the United States, Ruth’s bright, inquisitive 6-year-old daughter Sally (Asha Menina, a grave, wistful presence and the film’s key strength) has a parting conversation with a mystical archeologist who draws upon Mayan beliefs to comfort her, telling her that her father has gone to live on the moon.

By the time Ruth, Sally and her older brother Michael (Shiloh Strong) have arrived at their home, a large Victorian in a rural setting--production notes reveal that it’s somewhere in North Carolina--Sally seems to be in a trance.

“House of Cards” now commences its drawn-out collapse. To begin with, it’s hard to understand how Michael, established swiftly as an otherwise mature, responsible adolescent, would induce his sister, by now a virtual sleepwalker, to retrieve a baseball by walking in--not along--a gutter bordering the roof. Soon both Sally and her mother, who tried to rescue her, are in danger of falling.

Ruth, however, remains in deep denial about her daughter’s condition even after they both have been rescued by Jones’ Dr. Beerlander. It’s even harder to understand why Ruth, established as a smart, gutsy woman, refuses to hear out Beerlander in his understandable concern for Sally.

Presumably, writer-director Michael Lessac wants to plug into the widespread distrust of the medical Establishment, but a more profitable strategy would have been to move beyond this cliche to present mother and doctor as partners for whom the occasional disagreement is understandable in their pursuit to reach Sally.

Far too often Turner and Jones are required to fall back upon their movie-star charisma in participating in a verbal Ping-Pong match that threatens to lower “House of Cards” to the level of routine TV-movie fare. Beerlander endlessly reiterates his philosophy that “normal is awesome” in regard to the goals he sets for the children in his care, while Ruth stubbornly insists that his traditional methods might well shatter her child’s uniqueness.

“House of Cards” (rated PG-13 for theme), which has an insistently eerie James Horner score, picks up considerably when Ruth hits upon an idea that may enable her to enter her child’s hermetic world and retrieve her from it. This inspiration, to which the film’s curious title refers, is expressed imaginatively yet is marred by needless confusion at key moments of its unfolding. “House of Cards” is admirable in its persistent ambitiousness but is finally too flawed to be satisfying.

‘House of Cards’

Kathleen Turner: Ruth Matthews

Tommy Lee Jones: Dr. Jake Beerlander

Asha Menina: Sally Matthews

Shiloh Strong: Michael Matthews

A Miramax Films release. Director Michael Lessac. Producers Dale Polloc, Lianne Halfon, Wolfgang Glattes. Executive producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori. Screenplay by Lessac; from a story by Lessac and Robert Jay Litz. Cinematographer Victor Hammer. Editor Walter Murch. Costumes Julie Weiss. Music James Horner. Production design Peter Larkin. Art director Charley Beal. Set decorator Leslie E. Rolling. Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13 (for theme).