LABOR DAY - QUEERGURU

Adele has barely left her old rambling house since her husband left her to marry his secretary. Living on the edge of her nerves she cautiously ventures out just once a month accompanied by Henry her 13 year old son to stock up on provisions. Even then she will avoid any personal contact with other people and insists that he is the one that goes into the Bank to cash checks. On one such trip to the Supermarket, Henry is accosted by Frank who is trying to cover up a bleeding wound, and who insists in a quietly assertive manner that Adele gives him a lift home.

The three of them ride back in Adele’s old station wagon, and once home Frank tells them that he is on the run having escaped from prison and that he wants to stay there for the night. The year is 1987 and the only way that news travels in this sleepy New Hampshire town is via the television news bulletins which are soon full of warnings that Frank is loose somewhere in the neighborhood. He very politely insists on tying Adele to a chair just so that she can later truthfully tell the police she was held captive. And whilst she is immobile he sets about cooking the three of them dinner. He is obviously an accomplished cook, and both Adele and Henry react as if its the best meal they have ever had for years.

The one night stay turns into 4 days and when a neighbor turns up on the door with a basket full of peaches, the three of them bake a pie together. Its not just about food now, as this is the point when Adele really opens up and starts falling for Frank. He is after all not the dangerous criminal the TV insists he is, but a very nice man. And he is very hot too. And so with the tension disposed off, Adele teaches Frank how to rumba and in return he teaches her how to welcome a man back into her bed.

Their plan to run off to Canada together as a family and life happily ever after is thwarted, and things are then forced right back to square one. Fast forward a few years and Henry is now running a successful Pie Shop business (really!) and then all the ends of the story get tied up far too neatly and thus dispense with any remaining credibility this story once harbored.

This is the fourth feature directed by Jason Reitman (‘Juno’, ‘Up In The Air’) who also wrote the script from Joyce Maynard’s best selling novel, and he obviously couldn’t quite decide what genre this movie should be. It is for the most part an old fashioned melodrama that decades ago would be called a ‘women’s picture’ and if Reitman had kept just to that, the end result would have been more enjoyable. What makes it work as well as it does are the performances of two world class actors : Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin who soar above even this weak script to make it as watchable as it is. Credit too for young Gattlin Griffith a veteran actor at the tender age of 13 for his impressive turn as Henry.

The movie was in theaters for a blink of a minute …. long enough for Miss Winslet to pick up a Golden Globe Best Actress Nomination… and can now be found on Amazon. Best watched whilst eating pie.

★★★★★★