A Month of Sundays
Cineplex Odeon, Feb. 6, 4 p.m.
Star, Feb. 10, 7 p.m.
Rating: two stars
Although Matthew Saville’s Australian drama starring Anthony LaPaglia as a middle-aged, misanthropic real estate agent might be worthwhile for those whose exposure to the actor has been limited to his Hollywood fare or appearances on Without a Trace, this contrived exercise plays like a slow-burn variation on a Hallmark movie. The Australian actor demonstrates his dramatic range as the sad-sack Adelaide housing salesman whose friendship with a wise and warm retired librarian (Julia Blake) who claims to be his recently deceased mother gradually pulls him out of his funk.
Their interplay is the film’s strong point, as well as the way Saville illustrates how hopeless LaPaglia’s divorced character is at assessing his own midlife crisis. It takes far too long for the film’s most satisfying sequences, mostly in the home stretch, to kick in, and much of the intervening dramatic subplot seems like filler.
Ratings are out of five stars.