Learning to Drive

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Isabel Coixet/Starring: Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Grace Gummer, Sarita Choudhury and Jake Weber

Spanish director Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me, Elegy) helms Learning to Drive; her adaptation of Katha Pollitt's essay of the same name. The film arrives in theaters with little advance notice. I found this strange, given the considerable talents of its two principal actors: Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson. With an accomplished director, cast and intelligent source material, one might think the film would be a sure thing. Think again. All conflict in Coixet's film is very light and unlikely to upset seniors attending a Saturday afternoon screening. Its attempts at profundity: the car as a metaphor for self-empowerment and Zen-like here-and-nowness are trite and reaching.

Patricia Clarkson is Wendy, a moderately known book critic who discovers her husband Ted (Jake Weber) has left her for another woman. In spite of his callous disregard for her feelings, Wendy's love for him still burns. Her daughter Tasha (Grace Gummer), who is supposed to be in college, is living happily on a farm in Vermont; an act of activism Wendy doesn't entirely approve of.

When Tasha invites her mother to the farm, Wendy decides to take driving lessons in hopes of being able to drive herself. The move is supposed to represent self-determination; a quality Wendy lacks.

Her instructor, an Indian cab-driver named Darwan (Ben Kingsley) meets her one night after a cab ride in which she and her husband have a relationship-ending shouting match. Not long after, Wendy contacts Darwan for driving lessons. Her initial instruction is a disaster, which discourages her from taking a second lesson but Darwan's professional pride makes him persistent.

We learn Darwan is a political refugee who has since became naturalized. His Sikh identity becomes an object of oppression in his native country. With no wife and child, he shares a house with Indian refugees in Queens, many of who are illegal.

As the driving lessons continue, Darwan and Wendy become friendly. The lessons also become life lessons, as Darwan's instruction is supposed to serve (at least for the audience) as ways to cope with the real world.

Forging ahead without her husband, Wendy begins to date but finds it less than satisfying. Meanwhile, a marriage is arranged for Darwan and his wife Jasleen (Sarita Choudhury), who makes her way from India to be with him. Darwan finds life with Jasleen rather difficult, for his work keeps him away from home while her fear of her new surroundings keeps her isolated. Making an attempt to learn English, Jasleen picks up a few words from a children's program, only to be told by Darwan the words are actually Spanish. Darwan finds his new wife's self-imposed isolation frustrating but his patient nature prompts him to encourage her rather than scold.

Though an attempt is made to make Darwan three-dimensional, somehow the character still comes off as a genial guru without flaws, in spite of Kingsley's best efforts. The character of Wendy seems also sadly underwritten. If this story is based on real life people and events, it also seems rather cliched and the characters appear as lazily-conceived people from a B-movie drama. Because of this, the story walks an uninspired straight line. The movie does tantalize with the passing possibility of true friendship between Darwan and Wendy but it sadly doesn't happen.

Most every problem in the film is ironed out in orderly fashion. Jasleen succeeds at meeting people and venturing out of the house, Wendy earns her license, buys a car, becomes empowered and sheds her husband's influence, while her daughter Tasha, an uninteresting peripheral character, leaves the farm to return home. Darwan finds a wife and the makings of happiness, in spite of his permanent exile from India. I normally avoid giving away such information regarding characters but their respective arcs aren't difficult to ascertain within the first five minutes of the film. I expected a lot more from a story based on an essay. Do these people really exist in real life? If so, they must be more fascinating than they appear here. This comes as a surprise, for Coixet's films are usually populated with more nuanced characters.

I really wanted this movie to work. I've always held Kingsley and Clarkson in the highest esteem but as talented as they are, actors can only do so much with material so broadly drawn. This should be a touching story; Indian refugee and Manhattan book critic become friends, but it doesn't stretch itself. I won't read the article the film is based on; it would be frustrating to learn the real story has power and unpredictability.

Learning to Drive isn't horrible but it isn't good either. It's difficult saying anything about the movie because I find myself barely inspired enough to comment. If it weren't for Kingsely, Clarkson and Coixet, I may have skipped this post. Take my advice, wait for the film to stream.

Innocence

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Hilary Brougher/Starring: Sophie Curtis, Kelly Reilly, Graham Phillips and Linus Roache

Innocence is the greatest contribution to cinema in the last 75 years...

No, I'm kidding. If it were only that.

What it really is is a ridiculous time-waster made more so by a knee-slapper of a plot and a comatose performance by Sophie Curtis that wouldn't register as a blip on the most sensitive electrocardiograph. I thought she might be auditioning for a role as a doorframe but that requires acting skills beyond Curtis' range. I wish I could call what she appeared to be doing onscreen bad acting but it's something more akin to an episode of narcolepsy, though instead of falling asleep in the middle of sentences, she snoozes at the beginning and end of them too. Her character stays conscious long enough to attract a boy in school, but what he finds appealing about her mystifies me, for she radiates less heat than that of the refrigerator compartment that holds butter.

Curtis plays Beckett Warner, a teenage girl who loses her mother in a surfing accident during her family's beach holiday. Though an aneurysm is mentioned later as the cause, one could just as easily believe the mother willfully entered a shark's gullet to escape her hopelessly vacuous daughter.

Her grieving father, Miles (Linus Roache) moves the family to New York City, where he enrolls Beckett at Hamilton Prep, which seems very ordinary save for the all-female staff. The women, all sexy and youthful, gather regularly for a book group though they don't invite Beckett's father, who is a writer of some renown though it's never clear what it is he actually writes. The fact that he is a writer seems strange, given his terrible skills at Scrabble later in the film. Maybe we're meant to believe he writes pop-up books.

While Beckett contends with the loss of her mother, a fellow student commits suicide by leaping to her death from the school roof. Her body nearly crushes Beckett's as it smashes on the pavement. Concerned for her mental health, Beckett is taken into the care of the school nurse, Pamela Hamilton (Kelly Reilly, in a silly role); who also happens to be a descendant of the school's founder. Beckett also attends therapy sessions with the school shrink, Dr. Vera Kent (Sarita Choudhury). Pamela takes a special shine to Beckett and eventually becomes her father's lover.

Beckett befriends a classmate Jen Dunham (Sarah Sutherland), whose mother is a raging alcoholic and also a member of the book group. Beckett also strikes up a romance with one of the Hamilton boys, Tobey Crawford (Graham Phillips) whose mother is--you guessed it--a member of the mysterious book klatch.

Before long, Beckett discovers the book group is actually a witch's coven; one intent on sacrificing virgins like Beckett and her friend Jen for reasons I assume deal with prolonging their lives and preserving their beauty. I only hope they offered the girls free tuition; school costs are a killer these days.

Director Hilary Brougher fails to establish or generate a moment of fear or suspense. It doesn't help that her leading lady lacks the skill to emote convincingly during the few scenes she is actually required to do so. Kelly Reilly, who redeemed herself in the recently-released Calvary after an embarrassing turn in this year's Heaven is For Real (see my posting for that film in the April archive), is cursed again with a risible character. Doesn't it strike anyone as peculiar that a scion of the school's founder is relegated to the role of a nurse?

I should have brought a flashlight to the film because so many interior scenes--even in daylight--are shot in a dark, bluish-gray that don't establish a mood of mystery so much as stimulate speculation as to why the school hasn't paid its electric bill. As perplexing are the repeated shots of the night sky with full moons. A little Astronomy 101 might have educated the filmmakers about the unlikeliness, if not the improbability, of the appearance of so many full moons. I might have not noticed such niggling details if I had been absorbed in the story.

I really didn't care about Beckett or the ludicrous coven. Everything about the movie loudly proclaimed its own boneheadedness. Instead of sacrificing virgins, the coven might have been better off using their witchy magic to treat Beckett's Severe Personality Deficiency...or Sophie Curtis' underwhelming acting.

Where are you when we need you, Samantha Stephens?