Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed part of England, the dramatic film “Blackwater” (based on the 2017 novel “The Breakdown”) features an all-white group of people representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A married schoolteacher sees a woman slumped in a car at night and later finds out the woman was dead in the car, and this witness starts to get harassed by a mysterious stalker.
Culture Audience: “Blackwater Lane” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners or the “Breakdown” novel, but the movie collapses under the weight of its own stupidity.
The time-wasting mystery thriller “Blackwater Lane” is an inferior adaptation of B.A. Paris’ popular 2017 novel “The Breakdown.” This soulless movie ruins the book’s story with a nonsensical narrative and lackluster acting. It’s one of those movies that goes around in annoying repetitive circles until the movie’s predictable and ridiculously staged ending.
Directed by Jeff Celentano and written by Elizabeth Fowler, “Blackwater Lane” takes place in an unnamed part of England. (The movie was actually filmed in Suffolk, England.) In “The Breakdown,” the three main characters are British. But because “Blackwater Lane” is an American production, the movie changes the main characters to all be people who were raised in the U.S., in order to explain their American accents.
“Blackwater Lane” is named for the street that is the location of the crime scene that’s the catalyst for the story’s mystery. The three main characters in “Blackwater Lane” are:
Cass Anderson (played by Minka Kelly), a former actress who is now a drama teacher at a high school. Cass is soft-spoken and has a gentle personality. It’s mentioned that Cass is half-British and half-American and was raised in the United States, but she’s currently living in a castle that she inherited from the British side of her family.
Matthew Anderson (played by Dermot Mulroney) is Cass’ American husband. It isn’t made very clear what Matthew does for a living, but he’s been spending a lot of time renovating the castle. Matthew and Cass have no children but have been trying to start a family.
Rachel (played by Maggie Grace) is Cass’ best friend. Just like Cass, Rachel is also a half-British and half-American person who was raised in the United States. Rachel is a confident extrovert who is a bachelorette career woman who works at an unnamed office job.
One rainy night, Cass is driving on Blackwater Lane when she sees a woman in her 30s or 40s slumped over in the driver’s seat of a car parked on the side of the road. Cass slows down to take a closer look but doesn’t get out of her car. Is the woman dead or alive? Cass doesn’t know, and she’s the only driver on this deserted and desolate road.
Ultimately, Cass decides to drive away without telling anyone or doing anything to find out if the woman in the car needs help. Cass also doesn’t tell anyone what she saw until she sees a TV news report the next day that the woman in the car was found dead in the car. Police suspect foul play. A medical examiner report later determines that the woman had been murdered.
The murder victim’s name is Jane Walters (played by Sally Blouet), and her next of kin are her husband Alex Walters (played by Kris Johnson) and 2-year-old twins. The police estimate that Jane died between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. because she called Alex at 10 p.m. that night. Cass feels increasingly guilty about not checking to see if Jane was still alive and not reporting immediately that she saw Jane in the car.
It turns out that Jane was a co-worker of Rachel’s. Jane recently left the company and Cass actually briefly met Jane at the company’s going-away party for Jane. The movie reveals if Cass eventually tells anyone else what she saw on Blackwater Lane that night. In the meantime, Cass begins to be harassed by a mysterious stalker, who seems to have access to her home and who makes menacing phone calls to her. This harassment happens when Cass is alone and she can’t prove what happen, so Alex begins to question her sanity. How cliché.
There are half-hearted attempts to introduce possible suspects. Susie (played by Pandora Clifford) is a talkative British friend of Cass and Alex. John Collins (played by Alan Calton) is a tennis coach for the wealthy people in the area. Andrew (played by Judah Cousin) is a student of Cass’ who seems to have an obsessive crush on her.
“Blackwater Lane” is filled with shallow scenes that don’t really go anywhere. The movie’s plot twists are crammed in the last 20 minutes and are sloppily filmed. In the end, the villain or villains of the story can be very easy to predict once you see that “Blackwater Lane” has nothing clever or inventive to offer.
Lionsgate released “Blackwater Lane” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on June 21, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Miami, New York state, Israel and Switzerland, the dramatic film “Lansky” has a nearly all-white cast of characters (with one African American) representing the middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: Notorious gangster Meyer Lansky tells his life story to a journalist who wants to write Lansky’s official biography, while an ambitious FBI agent wants the journalist to breach confidentiality ethics to give information about Lansky to the FBI.
Culture Audience: “Lansky” will appeal primarily to people who like formulaic movies about famous American mobsters.
Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese has mastered the art of making movies about American mobsters. “Lansky,” about real-life 20th century crime boss Meyer Lansky, is one of numerous cheap and trite imitations of a Scorsese gangster film. “Lansky” is not a terrible movie, but it’s so formulaic that it’s often quite dull.
“Lansky” (written and directed by Eytan Rockaway) makes a half-hearted attempt to appear neutral about how complicated Lansky was. But in the end, the movie glorifies his murderous mayhem and almost justifies it by putting a lot of emphasis on how his corrupt business dealings generated a lot of money for local economies. The entire tone of the film is, “Never mind how many people were slaughtered because of Lansky, because he was a godfather of the gambling industry that’s given people a lot of jobs and boosted tourism.”
The 1999 HBO film “Lansky,” directed by John McNaughton and starring Richard Dreyfuss as Meyer Lansky, was a more conventional biopic that focused on Lansky in his prime. Rockaway’s “Lansky” movie attempts to take more creative risks by having it be about Lansky (played by Harvey Keitel) toward the end of his life and telling his story for a possible biography that he wants published after his death. Lansky died of lung cancer in 1983, at the age of 80.
In the production notes for “Lansky,” Rockaway says that his father “had the opportunity to interview [Lansky] just before he died. Meyer was a husband, father, friend, killer, genius, criminal, patriot and the founder of the largest crime organization in American history … He is both the protagonist and antagonist of this story. This film is not about loving or hating this man, it is about understanding him.”
Rockaway also admits in the “Lansky” production notes: “Growing up with a father who was an historian with expertise in the history of crime and the underworld, I was always intrigued by the adventurous and dangerous lives of gangsters. That dark and elusive underworld, with its own rules and codes of conduct operating in the shadows of civilized society, was fascinating. As a young boy, it sounded more like a fantasy world rather than historical reality.”
The movie tends to over-glamorize Lansky’s life and shuts out any depiction of the long-term damage of his crimes, except for how it made his wife angry at him and ruined their marriage. There’s almost no thought given to his victims. Although there are scenes that depict the brutal violence of Lansky’s crimes, he’s rarely shown actually doing the dirty work because the movie mainly shows other people carrying out murders and assaults for him.
In order to work his way up to being a mob boss with that type of power, this “Lansky” movie glosses over all the brutal crimes he had to commit along the way when he was a henchman, not the boss. And the movie barely mentions Lansky’s legal problems. As an adult, he only spent a couple of months in jail, but he was still very entangled in the court system because of frequent accusations (assault and tax evasion, to name a few) against him.
The other protagonist of “Lansky” is a fictional character named David Stone (played by Sam Worthington), a down-on-his luck journalist who travels to Miami in 1981, because he has a chance to interview Lansky for a biographical book on Lansky. The movie switches back and forth between what happens in 1981 and what happens in Lansky’s storytelling version of his life prior to 1981. By 1981, Lansky already knew that he was dying of lung cancer.
Lansky also knows everything about Stone’s background, including his education (Stone is a Princeton graduate), his work history (including being a crime reporter of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel in Indiana) and his personal life. Stone is having financial problems and is currently separated from his wife Christina, nicknamed Chrissie. They have two underage children together: a daughter named Eva and a son named Jack. Stone’s family members are not seen in the movie, but Stone is shown having phone conversations with Christina and Eva.
When Stone and Lansky meet for the first time at a diner in Miami, Lansky is firm in telling Stone that everything that Lansky says in the interviews will be “off the record,” unless Lansky approves it. Lansky stipulates that he doesn’t want this biography to be published until after Lansky’s death. “Betray me and there will be consequences,” warns Lansky. “I hope our collaboration will be a successful one.”
Lansky’s life story in this movie begins in Lansky’s hometown of New York City in 1912, when Lansky was 10 years old and developed a fascination with numbers and dice games played on the street. The movie doesn’t mention that Lansky was born in the Russian Empire to a Polish Jewish family who immigrated to the United States, when he was 10 years old. As an example of how this movie tends to glorify Lansky, it completely skips over any heinous stories about how Lansky paid his dues as a henchman while working his way up the ranks in New York’s Italian mafia.
Instead, the movie goes straight to when a young Lansky (played by John Magaro) was already a trusted right-hand person for mob boss Charles “Lucky” Luciano (played by Shane McRae), who was Lansky’s mentor. In this flashback scene, the movie “Lansky” mistakenly puts the year as 1918, when Lansky was just 16 years old. In reality, Lansky didn’t reach this level of mafia authority until he was in his 20s. Luciano’s criminal activities were funded by operating gambling businesses, which is also how Lansky ended up making his fortune.
The friendship between Lansky and Benny “Bugsy” Siegel (played by David Cade) is also depicted in the movie. As Lansky explains to Stone, Lansky and Siegel were like brothers. Lansky handled the numbers, while Siegel was the enforcer in their mafioso activities. Predictably violent gangster scenes of torture and murder are in the movie, which includes Lansky’s influential involvement in the crime organizations Murder Inc. and National Crime Syndicate.
As an up-and-coming gangster, Lansky met a woman named Anne (played by AnnaSophia Robb), who would become his wife and the mother of his children. (In real life, her name was Anna Citron. She and Lansky eventually got divorced, but their divorce is not in this movie.) Their first meeting is depicted as an impromptu “double date” situation, when Lansky and Siegel were at a restaurant. Anne and her friend Elise happen to be at the same restaurant, are introduced to Lansky by Siegel, and join the two men for dinner.
When Anne and Elise ask Lansky and Siegel what they do for a living, Siegel and Lansky say they’re in the “truck rental business.” But as their conversation goes on, it becomes pretty obvious that Lansky and Siegel are involved in criminal activities. It makes Elise nervous, and she leaves, but Anne decides to stay because she tells Elise that these two strangers “seem nice.” It’s implied that Anne, who less than smart, is attracted to the “bad boy” type.
The next time that Anne and Lansky are seen together, they’re married parents to a disabled toddler son named Buddy, their eldest child, who was born with an impaired ability to walk. When a doctor tells Anne and Lansky that Buddy will have to wear a leg brace for the rest of his life, Lansky takes the news very hard. He sees it as a sign of weakness that Buddy was born disabled, but Lansky eventually accepts it and is depicted as someone who is devoted as he can be to his children. (The movie shows that Anne and Lansky eventually had two sons and a daughter.)
But things get worse for Anne, because she becomes miserable in the marriage, Most of the later scenes between Anne and Lansky show them getting into shouting matches and physical fights. She hurls insults at him for being a murderer, while he doesn’t want to hear this truth, and he gets angry. Lansky, who admits to Stone that he was often unfaithful to Anne because he it made him “feel good,” seems to think that Anne should just shut up and be happy with all the wealth that he’s been able to provide for their family.
The movie shows how Lansky’s wealth increased considerably when he got the opportunity to oversee the gambling industry in Cuba. And, according to Lansky, he was an unsung hero in fighting Nazis before and during World War II. There’s a very hokey scene in the movie of some of Lansky’s thugs breaking up a pro-Nazi, German-American Bund meeting in Yorkville, New York, in 1937, and getting into a bloody brawl that ends with the Nazis being defeated. It’s mentioned in the movie that Lansky was behind several disruptions of these types of Nazi rallies in New York in the 1930s and 1940s.
Not only is Lansky depicted as a great American patriot in the movie, he’s also portrayed as a Jew who takes pride in uplifting his family’s Israeli roots by getting involved in funding weapons for the Israeli military. It’s a movie that shows Lansky practically being an American diplomat to Israel. He has conversations with Israeli government leaders, such as Golda Meier, who is depicted as politician who allied herself with Lansky and later turned against him when his gangster reputation became too scandalous.
It can be argued that because Lansky is telling his life story in the movie, he’s naturally going to exaggerate or make himself look like a hero. But the movie lazily goes along with this concept. A more interesting approach to the movie would have been to put the fictional character of Stone to better use as a journalist—someone who would and should do his own independent investigation rather than just taking Lansky’s word for everything.
Instead, the “Lansky” movie has a useless subplot about Stone getting sexually involved with a woman named Maureen Duffy (played by Minka Kelly), who’s staying at the same motel in Miami. There’s a scene with Stone getting into a fist fight with Maureen’s jealous ex-boyfriend Ray Hutchinson (played by James Devoti), a drug dealer who’s convinced that Maureen was the snitch who set up him up to be arrested. It’s a giant clue/foreshadowing of what comes later in the movie about Maureen, who is never seen again soon after her secret is revealed.
In fact, “Lansky” is such a cliché American gangster movie that the only two female characters with significant speaking roles in the movie (Anne and Maureen) are only there to fulfill the role of wife or lover, which often translates to “nagging shrew” or “sexy temptress.” It’s all so hackneyed, boring and unimaginative. Robb and Kelly are perfectly adequate in their acting, but they don’t have much to do beyond the stereotypical roles that were written for them in this movie.
There’s another subplot, taking place in 1981, of an ambitious FBI agent named Frank Rivers (played by David James Elliott) who’s determined to find out if the rumor is true that Lansky has $300 million hidden away somewhere. And so, there’s a scene of Agent Rivers trying to convince his reluctant boss R.J. Campell (played by James Moses Black) to give him more budget money to investigate. And it should come as no surprise that the FBI finds out what Stone is doing in Miami. How it all plays out is very predictable.
The acting in “Lansky” isn’t particularly outstanding—Keitel has played a gangster so many times in movies, he can do it in his sleep—but Magaro as the young Lansky stands out as the one who’s best able to convey some character depth. Unfortunately, much of the dialogue falls into cornball territory, which lessens the impact of the violent scenes. And the movie’s pacing gets sluggish in the last third of the film.
The dialogue spewed by the elderly Lansky often makes him look less like a gangster reflecting on his sordid life and more like someone who’s trying to be a life coach/therapist for Stone. In one scene, Lansky tells Stone that they’ve both had lifelong insecurities about feeling like outsiders because their fathers rejected them. Lansky’s father never approved of his son’s criminal lifestyle, while Stone’s father abandoned his family when Stone was a child.
And then there are the preachy platitudes that Lansky imparts to Stone, as if Lansky is giving some kind of sermon. In one scene, Lansky lectures: “When you lose all your money, you lose nothing. When you lose your health, you lose something. When you lose your character, you lose everything.” Says the man responsible for an untold number of murders and other destruction of people’s lives.
“Lansky” was made for a certain audience that loves to see gangsters glorified on screen. However, the filmmakers missed an opportunity to go beyond the usual mobster biopic tropes, because there’s no one in the movie who challenges or investigates Lansky’s version of events. As much as writer/director Rockaway might say that this movie is not about “loving or hating” Lansky, the movie essentially puts Lansky up on a pedestal in a loving way, in an effort to give Lansky “legendary” status.
Vertical Entertainment released “Lansky” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on June 25, 2021.
Culture Representation: Taking place in California, Oregon and suburban Washington, D.C., the romantic drama “She’s in Portland” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians and African Americans) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: Two former college classmates in their mid-30s—one who’s a married father and the other who’s an available bachelor—go on a road trip to track down a bachelorette who knew them from college and who might be interested in dating the bachelor.
Culture Audience: “She’s in Portland” will appeal primarily to people who like realistic relationship dramas with touches of comedy.
If people wonder where are all the good movies about male bonding that don’t involve action-packed stunts, war combat or juvenile comedy, then point them in the direction of “She’s in Portland,” a gem of a film that deserves to be discovered. Directed with appealing charm by Marc Carlini (who co-wrote the screenplay with Patrick Alexander), “She’s in Portland” doesn’t strike a false note throughout the entire film. It’s not a perfect movie, but it has an authenticity that’s refreshing when movies too often portray men as caricatures or as people who do extraordinary things that require huge suspensions of disbelief. “She’s in Portland” is also about the pitfalls of having “grass is greener” envy about other people’s lives, when in reality those other people might have problems that aren’t enviable at all.
“She’s in Portland” is Carlini’s feature-film debut, and if the movie seems very realistic, that’s because it’s loosely based on some of Carlini’s real-life experiences. According to the production notes for “She’s in Portland,” Carlini, who has years of experiences as a film/video editor, was single and in his 30s when he was presented with a chance to reconnect with a bachelorette who was a former college classmate. He and the woman had a brief flirtation in college that could’ve ended up as a romantic relationship, but it didn’t. He then had to decide if it was worth it to see if that mutual attracted still existed.
That’s the dilemma facing Luke (played by Francois Arnaud), a bachelor in his mid-30s who works as an underpaid and underappreciated music video editor in Los Angeles. Luke is the passive “beta male” in this story about a longtime friendship between two men who met when they attended the same college together. The assertive “alpha male” in this friendship is Wes Hill (played by Tommy Dewey), a seemingly confident venture capitalist who has what most people consider to be the American Dream.
Wes lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., and he makes enough money to afford a comfortably upscale home. Wes is a smooth talker with a “take charge” personality, which is one of the reasons why he’s successful in his job. He has a beautiful wife named Sarah (played by Minka Kelly), who was his college sweetheart and who clearly adores him. Wes and Sarah are parents to a daughter who is nearly 2 years old. They are all healthy and seemingly happy.
But Wes is feeling bored and restless in his marriage. And it doesn’t help that Sarah’s parents—Dennis (played by Robin Gammell) and Joan (played by Elaine Partnow)—live in the same house. The first sign that Wes is feeling discontent in his home life is early on in the movie, when Dennis criticizes a defensive Wes over not getting a household repair done in the way that Dennis would’ve liked.
It’s clear that there’s tension between Wes and Dennis, probably because Wes doesn’t feel like he’s the real head of the household, as long as his father-in-law Dennis is there. Wes also isn’t sure if his wife Sarah would take Wes’ side if she had to choose between Wes and Dennis in an argument. In fact, Sarah refuses to criticize her father or show that she’s more loyal to her husband than she is to her parents.
Meanwhile, Wes has been trying to reach Luke over the phone and has to leave voicemail messages asking Luke to call him back. Based on what Wes says in one of the messages, Wes has not heard from Luke in more than a month. Their college class is having an upcoming reunion that Wes plans to attend, and he hasn’t been able to find out if Luke will be there too.
And in the voice messages that Wes leaves for Luke, it’s clear that Wes imagines that Luke is living a carefree bachelor life in Los Angeles, which is a mecca for good-looking people who want to be famous and in showbiz. Wes makes a slightly sarcastic comment that Luke must be too busy dating all the hot women he meets in Los Angeles, while Wes is stuck in a boring corporate job and living in the same house as his demanding father-in-law.
The reality is that Luke isn’t all that happy with his life either. He lives in a cramped one-bedroom apartment. He’s struggling to pay his bills, since it’s not unusual for his clients to underpay him or pay him very late. And there’s more than a hint that Luke would rather be doing something else with his talent than doing low-paying editing jobs. (It’s a frustration that writer/director Carlini had for years, according to what he says in this movie’s production notes.)
As for Luke’s love life, he’s shown morosely deleting his profile on an online dating site. Luke ends up not going to his college reunion. But Wes does, and he runs into a woman named Maggie (played by Nicole LaLiberte), whom Wes and Luke knew only on an acquaintance level. However, shortly before they graduated, Luke and Maggie had an amazing connection when she invited herself over to Luke’s graduation party. Later in the movie, Luke tells the details of that night, in one of the film’s best scenes.
The romantic sparks between Luke and Maggie didn’t go anywhere because they never dated each other. After graduation, she moved to Europe, while Luke also moved on with his life and didn’t keep in touch. But at the college reunion, when Wes and Maggie begin talking, she says that she’s an aspiring painter who works as a bartender in Portland, Oregon. She also asks if Luke is at the reunion, and she looks very disappointed when Wes tells her that Luke probably won’t be there.
Maggie’s dismayed reaction plants an idea in Wes’ head to play matchmaker to Luke and Maggie. Wes has an upcoming business trip to go to San Francisco. And so, Wes decides that before he does his business dealings in San Francisco, he’ll stop over in Los Angeles and tell Luke about this risk-taking adventurous idea: Take a road trip to Portland, find Maggie, and see if she and Luke can rekindle what they almost started in college. Los Angeles is about 960 miles from Portland, so it will take several days to make the trip by car with all the stops that Wes plans to take along the way.
When Wes shows up unannounced at Luke’s door, Luke is surprised to see him. When Wes tells Luke about how Maggie asked about Luke at the reunion, Luke is less than enthusiastic about taking a road trip to Portland to see Maggie. In fact, Luke hates the idea. Luke tells Wes that he’s “taking a break from women” and that he’s been celibate for the past six months.
There’s more to Luke saying no to this trip than Luke not being interested in dating. Luke hasn’t been feeling that great about his life in general, because he sees other friends in his age group thriving in their careers, getting married and having children. Meanwhile, Luke feels stuck in a rut and wonders why he isn’t living his best life. Observant viewers can figure out pretty easily that the main reason why Luke has been avoiding Wes, who seems to have a nearly perfect life, is because of Luke’s diminished self-esteem when comparing himself to his closest friend from college.
Wes decides to make the best of his time with Luke, so they hang out at a bar, where a drunk woman named Mallory (played by Paige Spara) sees Luke and makes a beeline for him. She playfully tells Luke that he was “mean” to her, and it’s clear from his reaction that they probably had a casual relationship that she wanted to be more serious that he did, so he probably distanced himself from her. Sure enough, Luke tells Wes that Mallory and Luke used to hook up, but he just wasn’t that into her and ended the relationship.
Mallory tries to be flirtatious with Luke, but he’s not having it. A female friend with Mallory attempts to get Mallory to leave the bar with her, but Mallory refuses, so the friend gives up and leaves. Mallory is then surrounded by some rough-looking men at the bar who look like they’re probably going to take advantage of Mallory in her drunken state.
Wes and Luke are nearby seeing all of this take place with Mallory and the sleazy-looking men. Wes puts Luke on a guilt trip and says that they shouldn’t leave Mallory alone with these strangers. And so, Luke reluctantly invites Mallory to crash at his place. (A predictable vomit scene then happens.)
The next morning, Mallory mistakes Luke’s kind gesture as a sign that he wants to start dating her again. She tries to kiss him, and when Luke makes it clear that he’s not interested, Mallory goes on a tirade and insults Luke by telling him he’s a “loser,” while Wes is nearby watching this mini-meltdown. After Mallory leaves in a huff, Luke tells Wes that he’s changed his mind about taking the road trip. And off they go.
For whatever reason, Wes has brought a duffel bag full of cash with him on the trip. One of the things that Wes does before the road trip is impulsively buy a bright orange Ford Bronco that he saw for sale on a nearby street. This Bronco is what Wes and Luke use for the road trip, with Wes in the driver’s seat, literally and figuratively.
One thing that’s very apparent in the movie is that Wes seems overly invested in making a love connection between Luke and Maggie. It’s as if Wes wants to believe that true romance can happen against the odds, perhaps because he’s starting to doubt how much he loves his wife Sarah. There are bits and pieces of this inner turmoil that come out in the way that Wes looks and talks whenever his marriage and “ideal” life are mentioned in conversations.
Wes and Luke end up taking the Pacific Coast Highway on their trip north. They stop off in places such as Santa Barbara, Big Sur, Monterey, San Francisco and Humboldt County. And along the way, they encounter different people who give viewers more insight into the contrasting personalities of Wes and Luke, as well as how each of these two buddies interact when they meet new people.
Even though Luke is the one who’s the bachelor, he’s much more hesitant about approaching women than Wes is. In Santa Barbara, Wes and Luke end up partying with two fun-loving college girls who are about 15 years younger than Wes and Luke. Bayla (played Olivia Crocicchia) is a sorority type who is attracted to Wes, like Constance (played by Medalion Rahimi) is a hippie-ish type who has a connection with Luke.
Wes and Luke tell them why they’re going to Portland, and Bayla and Constance think it’s a romantic idea and encourage Luke to find Maggie. Luke still has some doubts and fears about how Maggie will react to this surprise visit, but Wes is so enthusiastic about the trip that Luke goes along with what Wes has in mind. Bayla and Constance need to go to Big Sur, which is in the same direction as where Wes and Luke are going, so Wes and Luke offer them a ride to Big Sur. This carpool leads to some mildly amusing situations.
Luke is also thinking that even if he and Maggie did rekindle what they started, it would probably be a long-distance relationship because he has no plans to move to Portland. Luke has become fed up with living in Los Angeles, and he’s considering moving to Richmond, a suburb in the San Francisco area, because Luke’s brother Phil has offered to help Luke get a corporate job at a sanitation company. It’s definitely not Luke’s dream job, but he’s tired of being broke.
While in Monterey, Luke gets a call from Phil, who tells him that the potential sanitation-company job needs to interview Luke that coming Monday. And just like that, Luke has to decide whether or not to continue on to Portland or go to the job interview. Luke makes a bet with Wes that will determine the decision.
Meanwhile, during their last night in Monterey, Luke and Wes meet another pair of female friends: Rebecca (played by Joelle Carter) and Ellen (played Lola Glaudini), who are in their 30s and seated nearby at an outdoor lounge area. Wes is the one who takes the initiative and approaches them, while Luke sits nearby and watches.
Wes invites Rebecca and Ellen to join him and Luke for dinner and drinks. This dinner scene is one of the standouts in the movie because the four of them open up about their relationships and what they think about finding true love. It’s a mature, very realistic conversation that will resonate with a lot of people who watch this movie.
Luke and Wes have told Rebecca and Ellen why they decided to take the road trip, and the two women weigh in with their opinions. Rebecca is newly divorced (she literally signed the divorce papers that morning) after 17 years of marriage. She and her ex-husband, who lives a few hours away in Palo Alto, share custody of their 11-year-old son Jesse and their 9-year-old daughter Caroline. Ellen, who traveled from Berkeley to comfort Rebecca through this final stage of the divorce, has never been married and she says that she doesn’t want kids.
There’s another pair of female friends whom Luke and Wes encounter later on, after a few surprise twists and turns in the story. It’s enough to say that Wes didn’t want this road trip only to play matchmaker for Luke. Wes is also using the trip to figure out his feelings about love and evaluating how he’s been living his life. His “grass is greener” envy about Luke is that Luke has the freedom to come and go wherever he pleases as a bachelor with no children, while Wes has a much more constrained and regimented lifestyle.
“She’s in Portland” makes great use of locations for what is obviously a low-budget film, whether it’s the intoxicating party atmosphere of Santa Barbara, the laid-back beaches of Big Sur or a somber cliffside gravesite in Elk, California. And, of course, any movie that’s about a road trip on the Pacific Coast Highway should have majestic views of the highway and nearby landscape, which cinematographer Devin Whetstone captures with breathtaking aplomb.
Beyond these production elements, the greatest strength of “She’s in Portland” is the heart of the story: the well-acted, well-written portrayal of Wes and Luke’s friendship. The supporting characters also make this story seem very naturalistic and genuine, but everything hinges on and ultimately succeeds with the convincing performances of Dewey and Arnaud.
On the surface, “She’s in Portland” seems like a road-trip movie to find love with a woman, but it’s really a journey about two male buddies who come to realistic terms about who they are and what they want out of love. And what they discover is that “grass is greener” envy isn’t so much about wanting someone else’s life, but it’s a fear that your own life has been about settling for less than what you want and deserve.
Freestyle Digital Media released “She’s in Portland” on digital and VOD on September 25, 2020.