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It’s a stretch to believe glamorous Uma Thurman as a flinty, desperate
barfly from blue-collar New Jersey. But director Mira Nair does her best
to coax out a compelling performance from the Oscar-nominated actress
in Hysterical Blindness.
The film premiers on HBO Aug. 25 and costars Juliette Lewis and Gena Rowlands.
The performances are watchable, but don’t get your hopes up; it’s
no Monsoon Wedding.
Lacking Monsoon Wedding’s lightness and serendipitous magic, Hysterical
Blindness feels instead like an acting exercise. Perhaps it is: Thurman
optioned and developed the script by Laura Cahill, which was adapted from
the writer’s pay of the same name. The "hysterical blindness"
is a medical condition brought on by Debby’s (Thurman) frequent anxiety
attacks.
Debby’s relationship with her best friend, Beth (Lewis), and her
mother, Virginia, a coffee shop waitress (Rowlands), evolves as the three
fall in and out (mostly out) of love in 1987 Bayonne, New Jersey.
Cinematographer Declan Quinn (Monsoon Wedding, Kama Sutra, Leaving Las
Vegas) adds a dreaminess to the grim, urban landscape, and a few shots
– traffic seen from a moving car, or sunlight shifting across a landscape
– are close enough to shots in Monsoon Wedding to prompt a double
take and wonder if its New Delhi we’re glimpsing at and not New Jersey.
"In working with [Cahill’s script] I tried to preserve the quality
of not being to dialogue-heavy," observes Nair, "but rather
relying on the strength and enormity of the actors…
"As a filmmaker, I use image first and foremost to create volumes
of emotion, without always relying on expository language. If you can
capture the inexplicability of life, the extraordinariness of ordinary
things, then you’ve captured something of life."
See for yourself when the film airs on HBO Aug 25, 28 and 31; and Sept
3, 9, 15 and 18; and on HBO2 Aug 26.
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