Our Expectations are superbly met

By BRUCE KIRKLAND
Toronto Sun
Friday, January 30, 1998


 Like the delightful Clueless or last year's Romeo & Juliet
revival, Great Expectations successfully updates and loosely
re-invents a great piece of literature.

 In this case, it's the Charles Dickens classic novel of a
boy's coming-of-age and his tumultuous struggle with the
vagaries of class, money and obsessive love that shapes him.
In the new film, the story is transplanted to contemporary
America on the Gulf coast of Florida and then Manhattan.

 Our hero (Ethan Hawke in the adult version) is now the
stepson of a fisherman (Chris Cooper). His gift is drawing.
His destiny is to become a celebrated artist.

 The object of the young man's desire (Gwyneth Paltrow as
the adult version) is the cold-hearted but hot-blooded
daughter of a rich lunatic (Anne Bancroft), who invites the
budding artist to visit her ramshackle home to give her
daughter some practice in socializing.

 We watch the youngsters together first as children, then
teenagers, then as hormonally charged young adults. Their
fates are intertwined in a dance that courts passion,
prejudice and the real possibility of emotional tragedy.

 Cutting through the lovers' angst are subplots involving
the hero's difficulty in reconciling his humble origins and
the great expectations that his brushes with fame and fortune
inspire. Meanwhile, the heroine must grapple with the
bitterness towards men that is a legacy from her mother.

 Director Alfonso Cuaron (the gifted Mexican who made his
U.S. debut with The Little Princess) does not always deliver
what the story warrants. The final passages are disappointing.
The film gets too safe, too soft and too conventional, as if
Cuaron had to satisfy Hollywood, not his own instincts.

 Nevertheless, the process of getting to that end is
absolutely exhilarating. Cuaron stages several sequences that
are such flights of fancy, such daringly beautiful shots, that
audiences gasp. In one scene, the camera swoops from Hawke's
anguished face, soars into the sky through clouds and alights
beside the airplane window where Paltrow enigmatically stares
out. She has left him again. What is astonishing is that this
'trickery' is perfectly compatible with the emotional content
of the scene.

 The actors are equal partners in this dynamic collaboration.
Hawke makes a fine leading man, an actor who embodies pathos
as well as passion. For the most part, support players such
as the flamboyant Bancroft and the solid Cooper are strong.
Only Robert De Niro, as the criminal the shy hero befriends,
grotesquely overplays his hand.

 Ultimately, though, this movie belongs body and sensual soul
to Paltrow. Adroitly blending the character's ephemeral
sadness with a razor-sharp edge of icy cruelty, Paltrow is so
radiant, so sexy and so sensational that no man could fail to
generate Great Expectations.