Stanley & Iris (1990)

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2022) Reviews almost write themselves when you can shower a film with superlatives (good or bad), but even the most verbose critics can find themselves stumped in trying to talk about generic middle-of-the-road dramas with no obvious hooks nor reasons to love or hate. So it is that Stanley & Iris is perhaps most interesting as a meeting between two actors, Robert de Niro and Jane Fonda, that you think would have worked together more often. It’s a working-class social drama about illiteracy (in which she teaches him how to read), but one that doesn’t really want to put in the work required for the social issue to be portrayed convincingly. Here, he becomes a fluent reader in-between a few scenes, as the film focuses on their romantic relationship but then, not really given that he skips town, becomes a millionaire and comes back to sweep her away from her miserable apartment in a chromed Cadillac or something. OK, well, maybe the way I describe it makes Stanley & Iris feel worse or funnier than it is. But there’s not much of a reaction while watching the film itself: it plays like beige wallpaper, moving from one obviousness to another while the seemingly ordinary male lead ends up being an inventor genius of some sort. Because why, that’s why. Director Martin Ritt’s final film doesn’t do much to tarnish an otherwise illustrious career, but it’s still not much of a good note to go off. Oh, Stanley & Iris is not terrible… but it doesn’t have much to recommend either.