Movie Review: 'Complete UnKnown'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Complete Unknown has more than enough "unknown" to intrigue from a distance. But would that it were more "complete."
It's a conversational drama from writer-director Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace, The Forgiveness of Blood) about a man contemplating moving to a new state to accommodate his graduate-student wife who "coincidentally" runs into an old flame claiming to be someone he doesn't know.
Michael Shannon plays Tom, the surprised ex who, at a birthday party in his honor, is introduced to a woman whom he could swear he was romantically involved with fifteen years ago, but who swears she is someone else.
Played by Rachel Weisz, the enigmatic visitor has tales to tell about experiences she has had that just don't ring true to Tom.
She answers to Alice, but she has also been Jenny and Connie and Consuelo and others.
When they are eventually alone together and he confronts her about it, she admits that she did indeed disappear without a word a decade-and-a-half ago, and has ever since been inventing identities as a way of starting over, adopting them and then discarding them and moving on.
Later, after almost accidentally taking a stab at impersonating other people – which Tom takes to following Alice's lead with relative ease -- Alice invites Tom to come along with her now and share the experience of starting from scratch with a new identity.
Part of him is flabbergasted at the suggestion, but another part of him sees it as an exciting way out of a troubled marriage.
Hmmm.
The script by Marston and Julian Sheppard has a promising premise to run with, but doesn't follow through completely enough to turn their hypothetical suggestion into a convincing reality.
In short, we just don't buy that this woman could actually pull this off in the modern era. How does she make her past lives disappear? How does she fly? How does she gain employment?
Nonetheless, the lead actors help the makers to at least close in on their artistic vision.
Weisz, an Oscar winner as Best Supporting Actress for 2005's The Constant Gardener, and Shannon, an Oscar nominee for 2008's Revolutionary Road, are interesting and appealing actors, and provide thoughtfully understated readings as they challenge each other's lifestyle that help to sell the slightly farfetched central idea.
But the screenplay registers as original but unfinished or unpolished or untidy.
Yet it is thought-provoking in its contemplation of the fantasy many have had about the possibility of simply ignoring everything objectionable or tired about one's chosen life path and, at a given point, adopting a new identity free of all part involvements or attachments.
That is, what kind of life would you opt for if you could more or less start over every few years?
In perhaps the film's liveliest scene, Kathy Bates and Danny Glover make us wish they were more prominently featured, but even their fine work doesn't succeed in distracting us from our abiding reservations about the overall film, which struggles to create high-enough emotional stakes and ends up seeming more like a series of improvisational acting exercises within a feature-length experiment.
That is to say that this film about identity has some identity issues of its own.
So we'll impersonate 2 stars out of 4. Complete Unknown holds our attention, but falls short of rewarding our interest.
