Restless
Starring: Henry Hopper, Mia Wasikowska, Ryo Kase
Director: Gus Van Sant
Rating: 2.5/5
Mia Wasikowska has shown that she is a versatile actress over the last eighteen months or so and she tackles a drama project with latest movie Restless.
Annabel Cotton (Wasikowska) is a beautiful and charming terminal cancer patient with a deep felt love of life and the natural world.
Enoch Brae (Hopper) is a young man who has dropped out of the business of living, after an accident claimed the life of his parents.
When these two outsiders chance to meet at a funeral, they find an unexpected common ground in their unique experiences of the world.
Ok Restless is a movie that tackles the idea of death how we deal with our own mortality and coping with the grief when someone passes.
Mia Wasikowska's character Annabel seems content with her fate while Enoch struggles with being left behind after his parents are killed in a car accident.
Now while the subject matter is quite an interesting one, as an audience we all have our opinions of death and deal with grief in different ways, there is just a hollowness to the movie.
Sadly the movie just feels empty from start to finish and this is a real shame because if could have been a very interesting movie project.
There is just something a little big forced about the central relationship - you just never quite believe in it.
And while I like Wasikowska and Hopper apart trying to deal with what life has thrown at them together the chemistry doesn't really spark.
Sadly Restless is just a little dull and Van Sant has missed out on making an emotional movie that could have asked more questions that it does.
Restless is out on DVD & Blu-Ray now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Gus Van Sant Mia Wasikowska