Watching Natalie Portman mature over the years has been a fascinating thing. From her indelible first roles in The Professional and Beautiful Girls through her blockbuster turns in the Star Wars films, she has maintained a graceful intelligence in everything she does. With Don Roos's Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, Portman takes on her first leading role as a fully grown woman, navigating the dilemmas of family for the first time.
Families never turn out quite according to plan, and Emilia Greenleaf (Portman) certainly never imagined herself the shunned stepmother. But after winning Jack (Scott Cohen) away from his wife Carolyn (Lisa Kudrow), she finds herself immersed in the cross-currents of a new hybrid family. Now second wife to her former lover, she's forced to work out new relationships with her unco-operative stepson and his acerbic mother, who is still very much in the boy's life.
Shadowing Emilia's every attempt to get to know the stubborn, precocious young William (Charlie Tahan) is the unbearable loss of a baby she and Jack had hoped would cement their new marriage. Ostracized for wrecking Jack's previous life and berated by Carolyn at every opportunity, Emilia increasingly distances herself from Jack, and is in danger of drowning in domestic disappointment.
Roos has made a career of crafting rich, layered roles for leading women. He allows his female characters to show the full range of their complicated selves, deepening our empathy as we follow their struggle. And he always leavens his portraits with humour. Watching Emilia grapple with William's elaborate dietary requirements is to glimpse what it's like to raise a child in Manhattan.
Roos directs Kudrow to a great performance, and gives Portman the room to show some of the fire she brought to Closer. Emilia is a woman who shuttles from grief to helplessness to anger, until she begins to find a way to define herself again. In all her conflicted glory, she is a wonder to behold.
Don Roos was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and graduated from the University of Notre Dame. He made his screenwriting debut with
Love Field (92), and later wrote
Single White Female (92),
Boys on the Side (95),
Diabolique (96) and
The Opposite of Sex (98), which was also his directorial debut. His other films as writer/director are
Bounce (00),
Happy Endings (05) and
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (09).