Going up and going down
Sexual intrigue defines Manhattan lives in Heights
New York City is the unbilled big star, second only to Glenn Close, in Heights. It’s the place where secret lives can be indulged and where sex charges the air.
In another era, this Ismail Merchant production might have been a melodrama of missed connections and misunderstandings. But in the hyperbolic present day, it’s a relationship thriller, a sexual cliffhanger about the intersecting lives of New Yorkers who teeter on the verge of the big revelation to come.
Though Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) and Jonathan (James Marsden) are preparing to be married, some dark storm clouds gather in the distance. One of those potential rain clouds could be Isabel’s mother. Like the eyes of Jesus following the couple everywhere, stage diva Diana (Close) feels as omnipresent as the gods in an ancient fiction. Her poster for an upcoming role in Macbeth is plastered over every square inch of Manhattan, an inescapable reminder of her opinion that Jonathan and Isabel’s relationship is doomed. The constant Shakespeare references don’t bode well for Diana’s relationship, either. While she worries over her daughter’s imminent betrothal, her own showbiz husband is road-testing her sexy young understudy.
More Magnolia than Macbeth, the calamity that lurks on Heights’ horizon is more contemporary, and in the end, hardly worth all the fuss.
There are interesting threads of ideas in Heights, which even if they never quite pan out, give viewers something to chew on when the pretty actors living in their Pottery Barn reality fail to thrill.
In a memorable opening scene, Diana begins the drama directing a couple of young actors performing a scene from Macbeth and chastising them to show some fire and passion. People today are “tap water,” she complains to her audience of thespians-in-training, afraid of anything calamitous and disruptive in their routines. And yet, like her wedding photographer daughter Isabel, who takes pictures of other people’s happiest moments, Diana is deeply passive and estranged. Heights is in many ways a story of inaction - or at least passive-aggression - and of how people often fail to break out of their lethargy and make a change.
As if to make certain all artistic bases are covered, the intersecting cast of characters in Heights include struggling actor Alec (Jesse Bradford), who auditions for Diana and may prove a sexual distraction from her marital woes. There is also a writer. Peter (John Light) has been assigned by Vanity Fair to track down the many lovers (including Rufus Wainwright) of a sexually rapacious photographer with an upcoming exhibition.
The arts are apparently the domain of wimps and voyeurs, like Isabel, stalking photographic subjects on the subway, or, like Peter, delving into other people’s sexual adventurism.
Or maybe artists are just like us, the wishy-washy film suggests, expressing something of our willingness to let life’s parade pass us by. In one of the slightly sinister and amusing expressions of voyeurism-as-substitute for action, Alec works as a caterer at a hip Manhattan nightclub where one of the evening’s entertainments is watching strangers having sex. But it’s hard to discern if this is first-time director Chris Terrio’s statement about the hyper-insecurity of city dwellers, or if he has something larger to say about all of us.
There are annoying red herrings and conventions that hamper Terrio’s ability to craft a convincing drama, including the use of split screens. It’s the kind of art-house hotdogging done more for show than to serve the material. The fact that the drama unfolds over a 24-hour period is another pointless affectation carried over from screenwriter Amy Fox’s stage play.
The theater that captivates Diana is defined by raging obsessions and bloodlust. Perhaps that is why it appeals so. Drama can give us a sense that the stakes are greater than they are in one’s own puny, uneventful life.