HOLLYWOOD HUES
In a time warp
Visually, the subject is soothing. It’s credibility that goes out of the window,
writes Ervell E. Menezes

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves in The Lake House

Back to the Future probably began this trend of dabbling with H.G. Wells’s Time Machine in the recent past (read mid-1980s) and ever since we’ve been having varied versions of the same subject. But in The Lake House we have two different persons in two different time warps. What’s more they fall in love. Can they meet? Well, it’s yet another "anything is possible" Hollywood genre. But does it hold water?

That’s a totally different issue. Dr Kate Forester (Sandra Bullock) leaves her suburban Illinois locale, beautifully designed house beside a placid lake, to take up a job in a busy Chicago hospital. Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves), a talented but frustrated architect working at a nearby construction site, finds the same lake house badly neglected, dusty and dirty. Inside there’s a note left by Kate about the dog’s paw marks.

This is how Kate and Alex connect but there’s a catch. For Alex the date is April 14, 2004, but for Kate it is April 14, 2006. It is through exchanging notes via the mailbox that they virtually get under each other’s skins. Both are single and have gone through unsuccessful liaisons. Can they risk fate and meet?

This rather unlikely subject is off to a shaky start and director Alejandro Agresti is neither Bergmanesque nor does he have an iota of Hitchcock in him. So he falls between two stools. And David Auburn’s airy-fairy screenplay does not help one bit. The opening shot of a close-up of Sandra Bullock is reminiscent of Clint Eastwood by Sergio Leone in those Dollar spaghetti Westerns. But Bullock is no beauty, despite a facelift.

She however is ideally cast as the girl next door looking for love, but afraid of involvement. It is also the first time she is teaming up with Keeanu Reeves since Speed. In that film there was little scope for acting but here there is a little more. Today star power seems to sell.

Visually though the subject is soothing. The ambience and the prospective romance hold promise. It’s credibility that goes out of the window. If the two protagonists are two years apart how can they meet? But they do. What’s more, she is trying to defy fate. Then cameos are peppered about, their respective exes and Christopher Plummer as Alex’s dad. They help but cannot explain the inexplicable.

So if one leaves one’s thinking cap at home, one may even enjoy the outdoor locales but not the story. It’s doomed to disaster from the verystart. Avoidable.

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