Tuesday - Movies
The Age
Thursday June 12, 2008
Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her (2000)
Channel Nine, noonAn emotionally constricted woman (Glenn Close) asks a hippie girl (Calista Flockhart) for a tarot reading; a bank manager (Holly Hunter) sleeps with several men and earns the disapproval of the local bag lady; a lonely police detective (Amy Brenneman) investigates the suicide of an old friend; and so on. If Babel (see Monday) plays with four intertwined stories, writer-director Rodrigo Garcia's Things You Can Tell . . . juggles five! Here, though, each story is essentially told as a discrete chapter, the emerging links subtle and sweet. The film won the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes in 2000 and there is no doubt it is a striking first film and indicative of real talent. (Garcia has largely concentrated on television since but has an Anne Hathaway movie, Passengers, about to come out.) An unashamed chick flick, this will be remembered largely for its stellar cast. It is unfair to single anyone out but pay special attention to the performances of Close and Flockhart during the tarot-card scene. Every director wakes up in the morning hoping to work with actors this fabulous. -- SCOTT MURRAY
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