The last time actor Peter Dinklage and musician Bryce Dessner were involved in the same project, we got “Cyrano,” Joe Wright’s beautifully moving (if underappreciated) adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic play “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Less than two years later, Dinklage and Dessner reunite once more in Rebecca Miller’s “She Came to Me,” the opening film of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.
In Miller’s latest, Dinklage is Steven, an opera composer struggling with an unbudging writer’s block. We learn early on this is not the first time the musician has been rendered captive to a creative torpor — his previous opera was hindered by a similar bout of unproductiveness, the sour product of a long depressive episode. Steven’s decaying mental health led him to Patricia (Anne Hathaway), his therapist-turned-wife.
It makes sense, then, that the missing piece to Steven’s puzzling blockage is a woman yet again. Out on an aimless walk, the composer bumps into Katrina (Marisa Tomei), a lively tugboat captain. “I’m addicted to romance,” she candidly confesses to him in the intimately confined space of her cabin, her whispers lulling him onto her unmade bed. As Steven runs from the rusty boat, launching the disheveled woman into the arms of disappointment, dramatic notes of classical music follow him through the harbor, inspiration as charming and treacherous as a siren. Out of that brief encounter, Steven’s new opera is born.
This thorny love triangle is embedded in yet another triplet as “She Came to Me” distances itself from the central conundrum to expand as a triad. As Steven exchanges depression for anxiety, Patricia rediscovers her religiosity, packing bags to the brim with donations to the church and grilling nuns on the ins and outs of their routines. While the parents are embroiled in problems of their own, Julian (Evan Ellison), Patricia’s teenage son, falls in love with Tereza (Harlow Jane), his schoolmate and the daughter of Magdalena (Joanna Kulig), the family’s cleaner and wife to Trey (Brian d’Arcy James), a conservative stenographer and history aficionado.
If this brief explainer of the intertwined narratives feels overwhelming, the same is true of Miller’s film. The director ping-pongs between characters without succeeding in mustering enough interest in any of them, this lacklustreness separating “She Came to Me” from Miller’s previous fictional effort, the charming 2015 rom-com-drama “Maggie’s Plan.” If the latter pulses with tangibility, the former struggles to find a pulse at all, the frustrating lifelessness often spanning from the overwritten script — six years in the making and adapted from one of the director’s own comic short stories.
“She Came to Me” lacks the palpable chemistry of a rom-com and the sobering relatability of a Nicole Holofcener dramedy, but it does find moments of inspiration thanks to its A-lister cast. Peter Dinklage’s big, sad eyes beam from within a face largely obscured by unkempt hair. They act as a silent plea from a man cursed with such a deep understanding of talent that it becomes unbearable to face the mediocrity of all aspects of his life beyond the professional. Hathaway is as endearing as ever as a woman at the height of a bourgeois existential crisis, her neatly manicured hands covered by latex as she frantically rubs the perfectly decorated nooks and corners of her New York townhouse, the immensity of her privilege painfully claustrophobic when placed against the modesty of her faith.
Then there’s Marisa Tomei. When we first meet her, she is spending her day off at an empty bar, waiting for someone to walk through the door and sweep her off her feet. She sits at a booth, quietly observing those around her while making herself virtually invisible. Her hair is braided and matted, covered by an old cap. Her body is made amorphous by combining overalls and other grimy layers. It’s a clever characterization, foreshadowing Katrina’s expertise in blending in, an art she mastered out of rueful need. She feels the odd one out in the mishmash of characters in “She Came to Me,” Tomei’s natural charisma is a magnet for evoking much-needed empathy for the sorrows of this lonely woman braving waters and feelings alike.
Like Tomei, Hathaway’s performance is greatly aided by costume design. Patricia is always pruned to perfection, with black pencil skirts, perfectly pressed cream-colored knits, and silk shirts adorning her petite frame. This penchant for monochrome is yet another nifty foreboding. Clothing does here what the script often doesn’t have the time — and breadth — to do: illuminate the character’s past while pointing towards their future. Costume designer Marina Draghici has vast experience working in opera. While the on-stage costumes are just as beautifully elaborate as one would expect, the brilliance of her work here lies within this deep understanding of the people living and breathing within the film.
It is a shame “She Came to Me” never quite matches Miller’s previous efforts. Nevertheless, it is great to see the filmmaker take the director’s chair once again. If the characters themselves often struggle to find any semblance of authenticity, Marisa Tomei, as the ultimate cure for writer’s block, is certainly believable. [C+]