Kyra Sedgwick

  • Something to Talk About (1995)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) The single best thing about Something to Talk About is casting Julia Roberts and Kyra Sedgwick as sisters. The resemblance is uncanny enough that it would have been a cinematic crime not to take advantage of it at least once, and, fortunately, the mid-1990s delivered right on time. The rest of the film? Not quite as good as that casting coup. Taking place in a small Southern town, it features Roberts as a woman who storms away from her house to her father’s ranch when she discovers evidence of her husband cheating on her. Within days, she figuratively firebombs the local housewife meeting by pointing out who else cheated on whom. At that point, it feels as if we’re going to get the usual emancipation narrative in which the cheating husband is kicked to the curb, much vengeance is achieved and the woman finds her own path. What follows, however, is more nuanced and perhaps more frustrating—in the hands of director Lasse Hallström and Thelma and Louise screenwriter Callie Khouri, Something to Talk About threads a middle path that may leave no one satisfied—our heroine resolves to get back to school and pursue an independent career, but at the same time also reconnects with her husband (albeit after poisoning him—it makes sense in context). There’s also a lot of equestrian material, which is neither a plus or a minus as far as I’m concerned. But in the end, with a supporting cast that includes Robert Duvall, Gena Rowlands and Dennis Quaid, the film settles for a rather gentle and innocuous romantic comedy. Something to Talk About has undeniable high points and a few chuckles, but in the end, it seems to play things awfully safe. This may not be a problem for the target audience for the film, which is probably just fine with the women dishing it out and the wayward husband being humbled but not kicked away. For anyone who doesn’t play by those rules, however, the question of whether a husband with a college nickname of “hound dog” is even capable of staying faithful hangs over the upbeat ending like a cloud. But you know what? I’m just glad we saw Roberts and Sedgwick play sisters at least once… even if I would rather have seen Sedgwick’s cynical ball-kneeing character as the lead.

  • The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

    The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) Alas, I must classify The Edge of Seventeen in the “films I should not have missed” category. It happens — there are more new movies released every year than anyone can claim to see, and some will slip through the crack. An affectionate look at a seventeen-year-old high-school senior with many problems, it’s a film that navigates a fine line between dark humour and sympathy for its protagonist. Hailee Stenfeld does have a lot to do with how the many aspects of her character end up working well, with some able supporting work from Woody Harrelson as a sarcastic-but-supportive teacher and Kyra Sedgwick as a mother who’s clearly a lot to handle for a teenager with self-esteem issues. Writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig navigates some tricky material throughout, but keeps the result largely light and entertaining. Various hijinks (including what’s possibly the most embarrassing text message ever imagined) and subplots make the final victory taste even sweeter. It’s a great script directed decently enough, and the result is among the better teenage movies of the 2010s. I’m sorry I missed it the first time around.

  • Singles (1992)

    Singles (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, May 2019) It’s remarkable what difference a few years can make at some crucial junctions. If you’re not a kid at a time when a kid’s movie is released, the film will not reach you in quite the same way. The same goes for other movies aimed a very specific age group even later on. As a late and reluctant member of the Gen-X generation (my parents were boomers, so I’m clearly obviously “Echo” rather than the forgotten cohort in between Generation X whose definition keeps changing … but don’t get me started on generational cohorts), I often feel as if I was slightly too young to fully appreciate the classic Gen-X movies as they were released. Singles, for instance, features actors ten years older than me playing characters roughly five years older than me—and that can be a significant difference as a teenager if you’re using university as a significant dividing line. All of this to say that I never saw Singles in theatres, and never had any real desire to see it since then. But now that I’m systematically investigating 1990 movies, Singles stands as a beacon of sorts—widely recognized as a major movie of its generation (I can effortlessly find no less than five “defining movies of Gen-X” lists that mention it, usually in the top ten). It certainly captures a defining time and place—Early-1990s Seattle, with grunge set against an endless backdrop of coffee stores. Our titular “Singles” means both the ensemble cast and a central apartment building not geared toward couples or families. The plot is conventional in the romantic comedy vein, but more interesting than usual in its execution. Writer-director Cameron Crowe was hitting his peak cultural relevance at the time, and his eye for hipness certainly carries throughout the entire film from fashion to musical choices. Obviously, it’s all romanticized, almost fetishized—but at least it’s absorbing enough to keep our interest throughout. It helps that the film features pretty actors—Kyra Sedgwick is Julia-Roberts-level good-looking here, and in between a very cute Bridget Fonda, Campbell Scott, and Matt Dillon the film has enough eye candy to catch anyone’s eyes. There is a place for movies that firmly (even consciously) mark a definite time and place, and I suspect that the specificity of Singles, having crossed over to period-piece status, will keep acting as a time capsule of sorts for a specific generation … even if it happens to be not quite mine.