Review: Some Velvet Morning

Neil LaBute’s two-person play-on-film is ‘too much method, and not enough madness.’

Director and playwright Neil LaBute is more interested in conversation than in action. The way his characters talk to one another, relate to one another and, particularly in his case, frequently manipulate and betray one another, are all of the distinct voice of a true auteur. LaBute is one of those screenwriters – like Mamet before him – to have such a unique use of conversation, that you can spot it just by listening to a few lines. His screenplays from the 1990s, often about sexual couples who deeply loathe one another, are some of the best of the era, and his Your Friends & Neighbors was one of the best films of its year.

LaBute's infamous 2006 remake of The Wicker Man, sadly, dealt a blow to his film career, and it wasn't long before he was busying himself with director-for-hire jobs like his remake of Death at a Funeral, and the much-lauded but little-seen Lakeview Terrace. The relationship dramas that marked the bulk of his career were soon relegated to well-reviewed stage plays and one-acts. But the stage was, I think, always more to LaBute's interest, and he has likely been more comfortable with the immediacy and shock of live theater than he has with the high-moneyed and ultra-structured world of film.

So that his newest film Some Velvet Morning, granted a limited release on Friday, feels like a play is totally appropriate. Some Velvet Morning takes place in two or three rooms, and has only two actors. The dramatic beats all fall on shocking verbal revelations, and quiet admonitions of wrongdoing by the two people involved. This is about a relationship, but more than that, it's a film about how conversation can be used to eschew or enhance that relationship.

Stanley Tucci (great as always) plays a beleaguered lout named Fred who unexpectedly arrives at the door of his former mistress (Alice Eve) claiming to finally have left his wife. Fred hasn't seen his mistress for four years, and hopes to rekindle the relationship, and she seems somewhat game but a little surprised to see him. They talk about their relationship, mention vaguely how they met, and talk and talk and talk. Their conversation is scattered and angry and doesn't seem to flow in any sort of natural way. Fred never refers to his mistress by her first name, always reducing her to her offensive nickname of “Velvet.” You can see why Fred wants to get back with Velvet – she's played by Alice Eve, and is very lovely. But one cannot see what one would see in Fred, a perverted and deliberately hurtful monster whose seduction techniques seem to involve humiliation and badgering.
I dare not reveal where all of this leads, but you can probably intuit through my description that a bomb is set to drop, and there will be a grand event and/or revelation that will put their relationship into sharp focus over the course of the film.

Sadly, that bomb is actually where all the film's meat and meaning lie. The big reveal/bomb/event (sorry to be so vague) is actually what defines the whole film, and reveals what LaBute was getting at in terms of the way these people relate to one another, how men and women react to one another, and how much or how little caring there actually was. The film is, then, an 80-minute setup to a five-minute payoff. It's a punchline movie.

As such, Some Velvet Morning would have played better as a short. The twist ending makes the entire film feel perhaps more trifling than it ought to be. Rather than being a rapid gutpunch of human sickness, we're given an indulgent actors' showcase wherein players are allowed to chatter and chatter and improvise and improvise. And while improvisation is an important theme in this film, and one can do worse than watching a talented actor like Stanley Tucci improvising for 80 minutes, I would have appreciated more focus, more statement of purpose, more actual dissection and pain from one of the modern masters of dissection and pain.
In short, there's too much method, and not enough madness.