“Diane”– Movie Review

This past week at The Film Society Of Lincoln Center, I attended a sneak preview of the drama “Diane”, written and directed by Kent Jones and starring Mary Kay Place in the title role.

Synopsis

Can an aging woman bond with her substance-abusing son despite a past indiscretion that has divided them for years?

Story

Diane (Place) is a giver.  She always has been and she always will be.  But she’s a human being so, by definition, she’s not perfect – and she’s well aware of this.  Nowadays, she works at a food kitchen with her friend Bobbie (Andrea Martin) where they feed the indigent.  When she’s not busy there, Diane spends her time visiting and caring for other people.  One of them is her cousin Dottie (Glynnis O'Connor), who has been hospitalized with cervical cancer.  The other is her adult son Brian (Jake Lacy), a drug addict. 

Shortly before Dottie passes away, she confesses to Diane that while she forgives her for something that happened twenty years ago, she clearly hasn’t forgotten it either.  It turns out that Diane stole Dottie’s boyfriend Jess and ran off with him, leaving Dottie to care for Brian all by herself.  It is only shortly before Dottie’s death that Diane learns she has been holding this against her all this time in spite of the fact that it has all been unspoken for a long time.  After Dottie’s death, Diane starts to lose other close friends in seemingly quick succession and she finds herself mostly alone. 

When Diane is unable to locate Brian for some period of time, he suddenly reaches out to her and informs Diane that he’s been in a rehab facility all of this time.  What she eventually learns is that through his rehab, he has become a member of a cult-like Christian church where he has met and eventually married a woman who shares his religious obsession.  While Diane is quite disturbed by this, she believes that the best thing for her at this point is to distance herself from Brian and his wife.  But when Brian subsequently visits Diane and confronts her about the incident from twenty years ago, will they finally be able to find a peace with each other? 

Review

About a year ago, “Diane” was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival here in New York City; it wound up winning awards for Best Narrative Feature, Best Screenplay, and Best Cinematography at that festival.  Based on that, and some degree of success in other festivals, it was fortunate enough to find a path to distribution.  All of that having been said, it is something of a slog to get through, despite the fact that it is only about an hour and a half in length.  This is due to two factors:  one thing is that it is totally absent of  any humor, which causes it to feel a bit painful to sit through.  The other is the fact that it lacks forward momentum that pushes the story forward. 

While many of the kudos for “Diane” go to the performances by the cast, this is largely due to it essentially being a character-based movie; it is an episodic slice-of-life style with very little in the way of a traditional narrative three-act structure.  In “Diane” it is difficult to discern the act breaks because many of the scenes feel as though they could be relocated to other points in the film without the viewer noticing very much.  Without a sense of the story propelling towards a conclusion, the viewer doesn’t get the impression the motion picture is going in any particular direction; instead, it is just meandering.       

Following the screening, there was an interview with writer/director Kent Jones, who said that “Diane” was shot in only 20 days.  Although the story takes place in western and central Massachusetts, he shot it in upstate New York because of the tax breaks the state offers.  There are quite a few shots of driving; while the obvious assumption is that it was done for transitional purposes, that’s only part of the reason for their inclusion.  The other reason, Jones stated, is that in western/central Massachusetts, people do in fact spend an inordinate amount of time in their car driving in order to get from one location to another.