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Eat Pray Love
“Eat
Pray Love” is a film that was written by adolescents trying to imagine
what grownup life would be life.
There isn’t a mature thought in its interminable two and a half
hours. It reminded me of the
cover story in last week’s New York Times Magazine by the New Yorker
writer Daphne Merkin, who details at great length
why she’s been in analysis since she was ten years old. She’s now in her fifties. Wouldn’t you think forty years
was enough? If you’re not
going to grow up by your fifties, it’s probably never going to
happen. I felt the same way about
the character Liz Gilbert, the forty-year-old woman in “Eat Pray
Love.” “Eat
Pray Love” (without the commas that separated them in the book) is the
story of Liz Gilbert, (Julia Roberts), a woman who deserts her husband (Billy
Crudup) and
her marriage of fifteen years for no reason that we can see, and takes
a year to spend time in Italy, India and Bali. On the way she also leaves her new
boyfriend (James Franco) and finds a friend in Rome, as both of them pack on
the pounds of pasta while lamenting their growing waistlines. Then it’s off to an ashram in
Calcutta, where Liz finds it hard to concentrate on being nothing; she just
has too much baggage. Fortunately
she meets a scruffy older man (Richard Jenkins) who calls her
‘groceries’ and encourages her to get with the program, until his
own tragedy can’t be hidden anymore and he tells her his own secrets. Now
it’s off to Bali, where she meets Javier Bardem. You’d think that would be enough
for any woman, but no, she is about to leave him as well, when her calendar
age (43) swoops past her emotional age (12) and she realizes that he’s
the man for her. End of movie. There
are many imponderables in “Eat Pray Love,” starting with the
absence of commas, but no matter.
More important is Bardem’s telling Liz
that he’s in the import-export business and so can do it from anywhere
in the world, except that he has to do it from Bali. “Can we have a New York/Bali
relationship?” he asks. If
I were you I wouldn’t hold my breath. |