The Event

Reviewed by Lee Shoquist

for Reel Movie Critic

Cast

Olympia Dukakis Lila Shapiro

Don McKellar Matt

Parker Posey Nick

Sarah Polley Dana

Joanna P. Adler Gaby

Directed by Thom Fitzgerald. A mystery/drama. Rated R (for language, sexuality, nudity, drug use, mature themes). A ThinkFilm Release. Running time: 110 minutes.

A young man dying of AIDS opens up to his family and friends in "The Event," an issue movie that raises some serious questions about assisted suicide - then buries them in a tepid, shallow mystery, peppered with a few surprisingly affecting scenes of family love and sacrifice. It's a film that, despite a nice performance from Olympia Dukakis as the beleaguered matriarch of a working class family, never comes together and by most counts is trivial and uninvolving.

Set in NYC's new gay mecca, Chelsea, "The Event" begins with the mysterious death of Matt Shapiro (Don McKellar, the excellent Canadian actor and graduate of Atom Egoyan's films), a young man living with AIDS who happens to be another in the line of mysterious passings of similar patients. Upstart D.A. Nick (Parker Posey, atypically low-key) is assigned to the case, and her probing leads to the young man's mother (Olympia Dukakis) and two sisters (Sarah Polley, Joanna P. Adler). As Nick begins the interview process with Matt's friends and family, she discovers a conspiracy of sorts, and we discover, via labored flashbacks, pieces of Matt's life and death.

"The Event" does something I didn't think would ever be possible: it manages to make Parker Posey and Sarah Polley - the comic and dramatic indie queens who have taken lesser substance than "The Event" and given it energy and style - boring. Posey is all one-note directness and is saddled with the chore of carrying a misguided moral torch until her character, of course, reveals a Big Secret late in the film. And Polley, who is luminous any way you cut it, seems an odd choice for a New York, working class Jew. The main reason to see "The Event" - if you can jettison the absurd and predictable assisted suicide plot, the passé and embarrassingly broad and "colorful" depiction of a cliché gay life, and the fairly colorless supporting characters - is Olympia Dukakis.

Dukakis, with her world-weary and comforting gravitas, has the film's best moments and is the emotional backbone of a threadbare film. With eyes that suggest a lifetime of compromise, motherly love and support, she gets not only the film's best scenes, but also its best lines. And in a strong late scene, she makes an unexpected move that is heartbreaking and suggests a moment torn from a better film.

A major problem here is that director Thom Fitzgerald doesn't have a firm grip on the film's tone, and much of the picture is hackneyed or dramatically shapeless. The result is a movie that certainly has some emotional moments of power, but too often relies on disco music and gay anthems to underscore what is, at best, a cartoon version of modern gay lifestyle. When it tries to be funny, it isn't very. And when it tries to be dramatic, it falls a bit short. And since the film is littered with a month/date title at the start of many scenes, and it moves right through Sept. 11, 2001, you'd think it would have somehow incorporated the tragedy into the story.

If "The Event" had focused specifically on the homecoming and revelation, family dynamics and dealing with death (as Polley explores in the superior "My Life Without Me"), there may have been a fine drama here, considering the talent involved.

Most of "The Event," which dares to introduce a bold dramatic subject before watering it down with a contrived mystery and misplaced comedy, is instantly forgettable. But when Dukakis is on the screen, chastising her brother for criticizing her son, bathing and dressing her weakened child, or defending her controversial decisions ("I put love above the law"), the film glows with a wisdom and maturity that's both comforting and deep. Wish the film were built around her, rather than on Posey's brittle obvious investigation.