James is an architect with a wandering eye and when Nina his publisher wife catches him with his latest paramour, who happens to be her best friend and the wife of James’s business partner, she calls it a day and storms off out of their apartment and marriage too. After she leaves James finishes his affair, and left alone with just his big dog for company starts to pine for Nina. She meanwhile holed up in the home of one of her writers is curious to know why James always felt the need to fool around. Using her new flatmate’s cellphone she puts on a silly accent and calls James on a flimsy pretext and starts a conversation up with him. Fast forward and a few calls later and James is pouring out his heart to this ‘total stranger’ about how much he loves his wife and how he is losing his mind combing the city for her.
Meanwhile he loses his job and when he shares this with his new best friend over the phone she agrees to break the conditions she had initially insisted on and meet him for a drink, and to provide a shoulder to cry on. By now he has worked out that it’s Nina at the other end of the phone, and she has sussed out that he has guessed who she is too.
That’s it. The entire thin plot of an extremely light and trivial chick-lit movie. Jeanne Tripplehorn redeems herself rather admirably as Nina given the script she has to work with, whereas Liev Schrieber as James does not. Actually the real star of the piece is the location : the city of Amsterdam …. and rather than just show the usual narrow houses and streets and canals and tulips etc etc it focuses on some very stunning contemporary landmark architecture.
P.S. One of the reasons that some movies are available on VOD before their theatrical release is because like this one, they are real duds. There is nothing at all perfect about A Perfect Man.
