‘Theory’ Takes Flight in Its Search for Love

“The Theory of Flight” takes off into dicey emotional terrain but stays on course with such steady grace and so blithe a spirit that it’s all the more satisfying for the various risks it takes along the way. The result is a beguiling romantic comedy that becomes another personal triumph for its stars Helena Bonham Carter and Kenneth Branagh.

Bonham Carter’s Jane and Branagh’s Richard have spirits that want to soar but, as Jane remarks, they both have gravity problems. Richard is an erstwhile London painter overcome with an obsession to fly, to the point that with homemade wings he intends to jump off the roof of the bank where his loving but conventional girlfriend Anne (Gemma Jones) works.

This act of folly lands him in court, sentenced to 120 hours of community service. He is somehow permitted to elect to serve in a lovely rural community, which conveniently has a big, empty factory where he can construct a biplane a la the Wright brothers.

As for that mandatory service, he ends up as one of Jane’s caretakers. Jane is a beautiful, 25-year-old woman in the advanced stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease, which has consigned her to a wheelchair and has commenced robbing her of her voice and, as she knows only too well, will soon claim her life.

Once the two adjust to each other, Jane confesses that she is on one final mission: She wants to lose her virginity. She curses that she missed the one chance she had at 17, not knowing that almost immediately thereafter she would be diagnosed as suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which involves the degeneration of certain nerve cells and pathways in the brain and spinal cord, leading to a progressive paralysis of the muscles.

Since both share a rebellious temperament--and Richard is an attractive man--Jane would like him to do the honors. And while he allows that she is “for a cripple quite fancy-able,” he indirectly pleads impotence, which sends them off on an adventure in search of a man to do the job.

Their odyssey becomes an affirmation of the rights of the physically challenged to live life as fully as possible. If such individuals can by and large win the battle for public access, why shouldn’t they extend it for the right to experience personal pleasure? But writer Richard Hawkins has a larger point to make, which is that Jane is really looking for love, whether she realizes it or not.

Hawkins presents the stars and their director, Paul Greengrass, with a twofold challenge right from the start: If Richard’s need to reinvent flight smacks of the overly whimsical and symbolic, Jane’s terminal disease is an invitation to maudlin tear-jerking. But Hawkins has thought through his material so thoroughly that Richard’s obsession works for rather than against the picture. In turn, the film has an amazingly light tone, thanks to its surprisingly amount of humor that Greengrass has been able to sustain in the face of Jane’s bleak predicament. (The picture also gets away with one of those full-bodied ‘40s-style scores.)

Only an actress with an aristocratic, resolute lack of self-pity and a formidably dry wit could hope to pull off playing Jane, and there could be no better choice than Bonham Carter, who indeed was to the manor born, a member of one of England’s most illustrious families. She in turn simulates the effects of Lou Gehrig’s disease with the kind of conviction that comes from dedicated research and observation.

Only an actor of Branagh’s charm could likewise get away with Richard’s “lunacy,” to use Jane’s word, which she uses about the same time that she points out, deadpan style, that in regard to the invention of the airplane, he’s been beaten to it.

If ever there was a movie that required absolutely the courage of its material, “The Theory of Flight” is it. The people who made this film believe in it so deeply that we end up believing in it, too.

* MPAA rating: R, for sexuality and language. Times guidelines: The film has considerable but tasteful sexual candor, and the language, while at times blunt, is always appropriate to the context.

‘The Theory of Flight’

Helena Bonham Carter: Jane

Kenneth Branagh: Richard

Gemma Jones: Anne

Holly Aird: Julie

Ray Stevenson: Gigolo

A Fine Line Features release of a Distant Horizon and BBC Films presentation of a David M. Thompson and Anant Singh production. Director Paul Greengrass. Producers Helena Spring, Ruth Caleb. Screenplay by Richard Hawkins. Cinematographer Ivan Strasburg. Editor Mark Day. Music Rolfe Kent. Costumes Dinah Collin. Production designer Melanie Allen. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

Exclusively at the Cineplex Odeon Showcase, 614 N. La Brea Ave., (213) 777-FILM, No. 57, and the Town Center, Bristol at Anton, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, (714) 751-4184 and (714) 777-FILM, Ext. 086.