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mrmichaelchadler · 6 years ago

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Diane

Diane (Mary Kay Place) stops briefly to deliver a casserole to a friend whose husband is recovering from surgery. “It’s your casserole dish I’ve had for six months,” Diane says as she hands it over. The friend hands her a dish she has made for Diane as thanks for all of her help. “This is your dish I’ve had for a year.” We can see right away that the small, snowy Massachusetts town Diane lives in is casserole country, a tight-knit community of people who know everything about each other. They bring covered dishes of food to those in need. One way or another, everyone is in need.

That includes Diane herself. Diane keeps a to-do list to keep track of all the people she has to “do for,” and she spends a lot of time in the car doing it all. She has a cousin Dottie (Deirdre O'Connell) dying of cancer in the hospital and a son, Brian (Jake Lacy), who is abusing drugs. Diane cannot erase Dottie’s lingering resentment over a past wrong. And she cannot get Brian to admit he has a problem and go back to rehab. Casseroles can only do so much.

The members of the community know all of each other’s stories. They gather around kitchen tables trading encouragement, gentle taunts, often-told anecdotes, and updates on who is doing better and who needs some support. Diane goes off by herself to a bar to drink and listen to Leon Russell on the jukebox. The sympathetic waitress cuts her off before she can get too drunk and perhaps places a call—somehow her aunt and friends instantly show up to get her home safely.

This is a first-time narrative feature film from writer/director Kent Jones, a distinguished film critic, scholar and director of the New York Film Festival, whose documentaries include “Hitchcock/Truffaut" and "A Letter to Elia." He has said the story was inspired by his own family of aunts, uncles, and cousins who “do for” each other. But he has clearly also been inspired by the character actors in the films he has studied.

Character actors are stuck with the exposition while the stars get the witty dialogue. They have to get it right every time so the director can use the stars’ best take. They are the Dianes of acting, the “do for” people of cinematic storytelling. And this movie is not just a tribute to the characters who are solid citizens, like Diane; it is a tribute to character actors who portray them. Kent has assembled a superb group of character actors here, who tell lived-in stories with extraordinary sensitivity and grace. The cast includes “I know I’ve seen her before” faces familiar to people who know the films of the '60s and '70s, like Andrea Martin, Glynnis O’Connor, Joyce Van Patten, and Oscar-winner Estelle Parsons—all old pros who bring every bit of life experience to their acting and their faces, too. It is a great pleasure to see actors who know how to use every bit of their real, unfixed faces to show the subtlest details of thought and emotion.

As a mood piece and character study, the narrative is uncertain and sometimes abrupt. But the focus is on the glimpses of Diane’s life, sharply criticizing a volunteer at the soup kitchen for being rude to someone who asked for more food, with difficulty, accepting help from someone else, feeling guilty about a betrayal that her cousin and son are still hurting from, listening to Chick Corea, and writing poetry.

Kent has said that he cast Place in the role after seeing her in “The Rainmaker,” a small part as a grieving mother. When that film is on cable, I make a point of watching just her big scene, which is performed with exquisite sensitivity. I used to think, as I watched, that I wished her character could have a whole movie. Apparently Kent thought so too. Place is a marvel, showing us the longing Diane can barely acknowledge to herself, and how her devotion to others is both rooted in genuine kindness and an effort to expiate the sin she says is constantly whispering, “Don’t forget me.” For us, it is Diane herself, as Place portrays her, who is unforgettable.

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glenngaylord · 6 years ago

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A PERFECT PLACE - My Review of DIANE (3 Stars)

I’ve been a fan of Mary Kay Place ever since her breakthrough performance as Loretta Haggers on the 70s Norman Lear classic, MARY HARTMAN. She’s been a bright-spirited American treasure ever since, but always in supporting roles. Now, all this time later, she finally gets the leading role of her career, and it seems all those decades toiling away on the sidelines has given her the right edge to tap into the ferocity this great role deserves. DIANE, the narrative feature debut of New York Film Festival Director and documentarian Kent Jones (HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT), has its many flaws, but as a showcase for Place, it’s unmissable.

Diane, a widow in rural Massachusetts, spends all of her time in service to others. She visits her dying cousin (Deirdre O'Connell ) in the hospital, delivers casseroles to sick friends, ladles mac and cheese to the homeless at the local soup kitchen, and most importantly bursts in on her drug-addicted son Brian (Jake Lacy) in one gut-wrenching attempt after another to get him back into rehab. We’ve all seen this character before, the pillar of the community who never takes time for herself, but Place makes her so real, so exhausted, and yet, thoroughly relatable.

Jones employs a basic, straightforward approach to his filmmaking, imbuing his talky scenes with a lived-in aesthetic and an eavesdropping, docu-style camera. Occasionally, he’ll punctuate acts with shots of his wintry town from behind the wheel of a car, establishing a slow, laconic rhythm to the film. Rarely stopping at Diane’s own house, the film consists of a repeated series of visits to friends and family, focusing on the building resentments, the aching passage of time, and a lot of deaths. Here and there, Diane lunches with her friend Bobbie (the great Andrea Martin), and their complaint sessions have such a raw intensity. Bobbie may be clueless as she complains about having to host a family Christmas while sitting across from a friend who lives alone and is worried sick that he son could die at any minute, but their friendship clearly has room for the occasional tone deaf pronouncements.

The main thrust of the story centers on her relationship with her son. You get the sense there’s an unspoken past which informs Diane’s intensity, and once revealed, you come to understand the repetitive circle of her life. Lacy matches Place with a wildly unpredictable performance filled with manipulative guilt trips and viciousness. Late in the second act, his character takes an odd turn, one I didn’t see coming and am not sure is successfully rendered, but it all leads to an incredible third act scene between the two where in one line, he sums up their complicated relationship so perfectly. Jones knows these people and allows their back stories to unfold with minimal exposition.

Sounds better than a 3 Star review, you say? Well, unfortunately, Jones makes some choices late into the film which derailed things for me. Using slow motion techniques, dream sequences, and an almost incomprehensible final scene don’t feel supported by his otherwise simple filmmaking style. As they play out, these scenes feel more confusing than anything else. Had he shot the whole film with a more sweeping fashion, he may have succeeded with these scenes. By the end, I truly had no idea what I had just seen. Was the entire film a memory piece told by the person we see at the end? Did we witness a dream or a flashback? The passage of time seems clumsy and the POV shots feel overused.

These choices felt ill-judged after witnessing the beautifully realized story which comes before. Still, Place makes it worth the somewhat troubled journey. A scene in which she gets drunk and dances by herself in a bar, or one in which she berates another soup kitchen volunteer simply blazed across the screen. Jones surrounds Place with a gallery of women who have had long, unheralded careers. Estelle Parsons movingly embodies the role of Diane’s quietly suffering aunt. Joyce Van Patten and Glynnis O’Connor, two welcome blasts from the past, feel just right as Diane’s circle of friends. Jones seems to be celebrating his own upbringing as well as his love for actors he grew up loving. As a first feature, he has done a highly commendable job. It’s unfussy and doesn’t mark him so much as a visual master as someone who can create credible environments from which his actors can shine. Eventually he may discover how to shoot some of his more stylistically complex ideas, but until then, his humanistic voice as is has already made its mark by giving us Place at her best.

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teasertrailer · 6 years ago

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Diane - movie trailer: https://teaser-trailer.com/movie/diane-starring-mary-kay-place/

written and directed by Kent Jones and starring Mary Kay Place, Jake Lacy, Andrea Martin, Estelle Parsons, Deirdre O’Connell, Joyce Van Patten, Phyllis Somerville, Glynnis O’Connor, and Paul McIsaac

#Diane #DianeMovie #MaryKayPlace

#Diane #Mary Kay Place

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speed884 · 2 years ago

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#Diane Glynnis

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cinephiled-com · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on Cinephiled

New Post has been published on http://www.cinephiled.com/interview-mary-kay-place-delivers-powerhouse-performance-diane/

Interview: Mary Kay Place Delivers Powerhouse Performance in ‘Diane’

For Diane (Mary Kay Place), everyone else comes first. Generous but with little patience for self-pity, she spends her days checking in on sick friends, volunteering at her local soup kitchen, and trying valiantly to save her troubled, drug-addicted adult son (Jake Lacy) from himself. But beneath her relentless routine of self-sacrifice, Diane is fighting a desperate internal battle, haunted by a past she can’t forget and which threatens to tear her increasingly chaotic world apart. Built around an extraordinary, fearless performance from Mary Kay Place, the narrative film debut from Kent Jones is a profound, beautifully human portrait of a woman rifling through the wreckage of her life in search of redemption. Diane also features a stellar ensemble including Estelle Parsons, Andrea Martin, Joyce Van Patten, Deirdre O’Connell, Phyllis Somerville, and Glynnis O’Connor.

I have admired Mary Kay Place for many years, from her wonderful work on TV in shows like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Big Love, and Lady Dynamite, to her performances in films such as The Big Chill, New York, New York, and I’ll See You in My Dreams. I sat down with Mary Kay Place in Hollywood to discuss this achingly poignant film.

Danny Miller: What an extraordinary performance, Mary Kay, and just remarkable that you’re in every scene. When you work on a role this intense, do you have to bring in some resonance from your own life?

Mary Kay Place: Oh, I think you do. When I made this film, my parents and grandparents had already passed away. I certainly understood that element and I related to the community aspect of the town that Diane lived in because that was like my grandparents’ towns. They were different sizes, but I remember that same kind of casserole exchange and people picking up each other up from doctor’s appointments and all that. My grandmother did that for a million of her friends. I really connected to that aspect and I think everybody’s got some addiction in their family history, too, as I do, so I could relate to the pain of that as well.

The story of you and your son in this film is so moving. That look in your eyes when we understand that you know what the son is saying isn’t true, but you’re just trying to find a way to move on and be hopeful while still trying to protect yourself.

Yes. I try to get him to see his own truth instead of being in denial. And I know that I’m codependent, but I’m just trying to cope as best I can.

It’s so interesting how your character longs to be in control and yet keeps having these moments that are almost like a surrender. Like, okay, this is the reality of what’s happening so I just have to deal with it and move on to the next thing.

Right, to the next item on the list to cross off.

I found this to be such an adult film because nothing is over-explained. It takes a while to figure out all the relationships and to uncover the baggage that each character has. I love that. Were you always on the same wavelength with writer/director Kent Jones about what Diane was going through or did you have to find your own place in understanding how she was moving through the world and things like how her guilt was affecting her relationships?

I definitely had to find my own place. I actually wrote a complete and total history of Diane from the time I was in high school to meeting my son’s father to that relationship with my cousin’s boyfriend, every detail of that. I also researched the closing of the GE plant in Pittsfield where Kent’s mother was from and all of the things that could have affected the people in this area.

I want to that as a novel! So you went into Diane’s back story even more than Kent did?

Oh yeah, Kent hasn’t even read what I wrote about her. I sent him an early draft but then kept working on it for weeks so I could really understand the character.

Wow, do you always do that when you play a part?

Yeah, if there’s any particular thing that has impacted my character in some way. Even if the audience doesn’t know what it is, I need to know because if it’s just some general idea, it doesn’t resonate in the body the same way. Like Diane running off with the cousin’s boyfriend. It was a moment of real spontaneity, maybe the first and only time I’d ever have that. I know why I did it but I also know I blame myself for my son’s addiction because my leaving was such a big deal in the family and everyone was scandalized.

There’s a lot there that I can relate to from my own family. I still feel like the emotions from the movie are in my cells even though I saw it a week ago. When you’re acting in something this intense, do you feel like those emotions enter your body?

Oh, absolutely. I remember reading something Jessica Lange wrote after she played Joan Crawford in that film a few years ago — that your body doesn’t know that you’re acting. And my body definitely did not know, I had a real physical thing that happened as a result of making this film, I got a physical illness from taking all of that in.

Whoa, how do you cope with that?

I started doing mindful meditation and other things to counteract how the body deals with the stress. Between this and doing the TV series Lady Dynamite, I honestly hadn’t work that intensely since I was doing Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman more than 40 years ago. I remember back then our schedule was so intense, recording that show five times a week, and I was also making films and recording albums. It affected my physically. I went into a depression in the early 1980s because I didn’t know how to book my time, and I didn’t know how to restore myself in between projects.

Interesting. I remember Patti LuPone talking about why she couldn’t do two very serious plays in a row, that’s why she does fun musicals like Anything Goes in between her more intense projects.

Right. I was offered this very deep, dark part right after doing this film and Lady Dynamite and I had to turn it down. Number one, there wasn’t enough time to properly prepare, but number two, my body wasn’t ready to go back to that place and I just knew it would not be good, I had to protect myself from that. So your question is very insightful, Danny, because it does take a toll. I think that’s why Heath Ledger is not alive today. He did drugs to counteract that stress. I think there needs to be some spiritual or psychological letting-go ritual after very creative work. I’m still trying to figure out how I can develop something like that because it’s a lot of intense energy in your central nervous system. That said, we had a lot of fun making the movie, there was a lot of laughing and it wasn’t a morose atmosphere on set. But we spent 16-hour days working and then as soon as work was over I had to prepare for the next day.

It’s hard to believe the entire movie was shot in 20 days.

Yeah, so there wasn’t really any time for hanging out and relaxing. It was all work all the time, but it was still fun and exciting.

Watching that ensemble of great actors was just thrilling. I loved that dinner table scene with all of those amazing actors such as Estelle Parson and Joyce Van Patten.

They were great, weren’t they? Estelle has amazing energy and is just titanium. I remember we were shooting a scene in the hospital at one in the morning and she was bouncing all over the place! And Joyce and Andrea Martin and Phyllis Summerville and Deirdre O’Connell as the cousin. So fabulous.

This film brought up so much stuff for me — so many family complexities that I could relate to, from dealing with mortality issues as I’m doing now to the mother leaving, as my mother did back in the day, to all the addiction stuff. What have the discussions been like after screenings?

Very interesting. A lot of younger people don’t really want to think about death. But for baby boomers, even if they’ve put off thinking about these things for years, they’re finding out that they have to deal with them now. Many people feel very connected to this story, and a lot more men than I thought would be.

I could certainly relate to Diane and see the areas in my life where I needed to look at things that I do.

Me, too, God knows. Especially that thinking where you get stuck on a loop of regret about something you’ve done in the past and you just can’t get off of it.

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Diane is currently playing in select cities.

#Diane #Estelle Parsons #Jake Lacey #Kent Jones #Mary Kay Place #Interviews #What's Hot

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