North Carolina’s beaches are considered to be some of the most beautiful stretches of land in the world. The cerulean blue water laps at the whitish sand and sprouts of reeds that seem to be sprung up all over the shore. It is beautiful, but unfortunately, it’s not quite enough to make a movie. Maybe a surf video. But not a Hollywood romance story starring two actors who can usually provide one on cue.
Last we saw this pair was in the 2002 thriller Unfaithful, and in Nights in Rodanthe, Richard Gere and Diane Lane reunite to play a less deranged, but in turn, a more boring, duo.
In the classic style of opening sequences of romance films, we meet both characters separately. Adrienne (Lane) is separated from her husband (Christopher Meloni) and is the mother of two, attempting to maintain a relationship with her scornful daughter since the split—while Gere plays Paul, a surgeon who has an estranged son, and has traveled to Rodanthe to reconcile with the family of his patient who’s suing him for wrongful death. Paul is the only weekend guest at an inn along the shore at which Adrienne is tending to in place of her out-of-town friend.
The pair of them are both sad and lonely in their own ways, and thus their dysfunction forms a fast friendship that leads to love during his stay.
While these multiple plot lines are forced into the space of the film, still another crashes in as a hurricane approaches and eventually makes it’s landing, causing a flare up in the cinematography, and simultaneously a beginning to their new love.
Other narrative bits are tossed into the could-have-been simple love story, as Adrienne’s nearly ex-husband wants her back; the ex, played by Christopher Meloni who by the way played the ex of Gere’s love interest in Runaway Bride as well.
And so the movie rolls along as a snail does along concrete, leaving a dotted, holey, narrative path—struggling with a failing marriage, attempting to wrestle out of a lawsuit, trying to survive a hurricane, and all the while falling in love with a stranger—now that’s too big a mouthful to provide necessary attention to any one plot line to make it feel complete. In general, it’s a story similar to Something’s Gotta Give, in that it’s about two people of a certain age who thought love was lost for them, but finding themselves granted a second shot—only without any comedy.
The reputable cast allows for a reasonably enjoyable time spent watching, however, but do not expect to be moved anywhere further than back to the rental store to return it and pick up the romantic comedy you expected from Gere—Pretty Woman.
Nights in Rodanthe is a movie made for a weekend at home, turned on in the background of your routine—as the ride is monotonous enough that how you got there and where you’re going, hardly matters. The natural outdoor locations provided excellent cinematographic fodder for the movie’s first-time film director George C. Wolfe. He took full advantage of the natural beauty of North Carolina’s Outer Banks with sweeping aerial shots of the small inn at which the love story is told.
The beautiful scenery gives the picture a certain je ne sais quoi, and with Gere’s gentle masculinity and Lane’s wholesome quality–it is clear the on-screen chemistry between them has certainly carried over from Unfaithful, but with only a shaky and distracting web of plots and subplots to fall back on, the film is incomparable to either actor’s prior, highly regarded work. The characters were washed out. It was as if no one took the time to fill them in with color, and instead left them in black and white.
It essentially used all of the been-done tricks in the romance film “book,” in an attempt to reel in genre fans, simply on that pretense alone. It played like a skeleton. It had the framework, all of the pieces were hinged correctly, but it lacked everything else that makes a film come alive. There were bones, but no flesh, no heart—no pulse. And I must say—I am a fan of the romance variety, both dramatic and comedic, and this film didn’t stack up. That said, the on location filming made me want to hike up my jeans and take a barefoot stroll down the uninhabited beach of Rodanthe, NC—save for when a hurricane is schedule to land.
DVD Bonus Features
No extras are offered except for the usual language selection and subtitle feature. A making-of might have been nice, but would not have added much more than the movie itself, as it too could only continue to highlight the beautiful location, and leave the rest to the flutter off into the wind.
"Nights in Rodanthe" is on sale February 10, 2009 and is rated PG13. Romance. Directed by George C Wolfe. Written by Nicholas Sparks (novel), Ann Peacock (screenplay), John Romero (screenplay). Starring Diane Lane, Richard Gere.
