The Night Listener (2007, DVD)

Sigh. I still have Maupin's novel "The Night Listener" on my nightstand. I understand from friends that it is (once again) more complex and easier to like than the new film. Maupin wrote the script with director Patrick Stettner and Terry Anderson, who was once Maupin's real life partner. The novel is semi-autobiographical, a story of love, loss and obsession that twists itself into a kind of psychological thriller.

Still, I was more compelled by the deeper emotions than I was by the plot twists and dark moments.

I try to see every movie that features Toni Collette. She's a consummate actress that isn't afraid to look ordinary, plain, kind of "horsy" when the role calls for it. In this film, as Donna, the social worker who adopted a young boy, Peter (Rory Culkin)to help him recover from a chilhood of abuse, pedophilia and sexual slavery, as well as AIDS, Collette is down right spooky. She's a little "off", but somehow we can't put our fingers on why. Peter's written a book about his so called childhood. As publishing editor Ashe (the always interesting Joe Morton) puts it, it was the cleanest manuscript he'd read that year, and so compelling that he gives it to author/public radio talk show host Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) to read and dissect before publication.

Part of Ashe's strategy is to save Noone from himself. Noone is a national figure who brought his talk show (Noone at Night) to life by discussing his relationship with much younger, AIDS-stricken partner Jess (Bobby Cannavale). Throughout their 8 years together, while being applauded for his forthright style by the gay community, Noone has been feeding off his personal life, changing and tweaking details to make a better show. At the beginning of the film, we learn he's barely able to work anymore, because Jess has decided to leave him -- stronger and recovering from his illness, Jess has decided to live life on his own, with people who are more his age. Still, he cares for Gabriel and wants to continue the friendship. It is in the denouement of the relationship that Jess finally confesses that Gabe's laying out of their lives for all to see is what finally drove him away.

Noone reads the book by young Peter and begins a long-distance relationship with him and his caretaker by phone. He's being brought back to life by his feelings of caring when both of the young friends in "real" life, Jess and assistant Anna (Sandra Oh) cause him to take stock of whether or not Peter's story is real. There's a startling similarity to Peter and Donna's voices on the phone, and there's little that Gabe can do when his visit to see Peter in Wisconsin at Christmas is cancelled because Peter is in the hospital. Noone expresses his concerns to Ashe and suddenly Peter's book is on the back burner.

Tension heightens when Gabe decides to take a trip to rural Wisconsin to find out whether or not young Peter is who he says he is. The subsequent twists, turns and final peeling away of the truth in the movie are bizarre, have moments of discomfort, but no real shock or tension, as was found in the films of Hitchcock or "The Sixth Sense", which this film is being compared to. I must admit, however, that there is a moment of absolute terror for me when Gabe is a reluctant passenger in a car that turns off the road. The sounds of it continuing to travel are immediately recognizable to someone from Minnesota as the sounds a car makes when it is traveling over ice on a frozen lake. Now that is true fear.

Robin Williams plays Gabe as a man uncomfortable with where his life has taken him. He's real, he's difficult, and he's a little hard to understand when he finally arrives in Wisconsin. His feelings for Jess are never far from the surface, but it is in his moments with Sandra Oh, that his likeability shines through.

Collette, as mentioned before, is worth the price of admission. Once again, we find ourselves drawn to her, and her performance, almost by the sense of eeriness that she projects.

Cannavale, Morton, and Oh are some of my favorites from television, and all sparkle here, especially in interaction with Williams. Lastly, young Rory Culkin, in his brief moments on screen, is hard not to like.

I'm always surprised when a studio hands a film to a writer, as a director. (He's previously written and directed the forgettable "The Business of Strangers" in 2001, although in that film he also coaxed fine performances from Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles). Stettner is no exception to the rule that big dollars and actors/actresses might need a firmer hand. I am surprised that he was able to get the characterization on film and the performances flowing at this level; his cinematography was interesting, but script, the plotting and the sense of thrill and danger were very underdeveloped. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the final scene tacked on to show the audience where Donna has landed. The scene was almost dysfunctional; instead of leaving the viewer with a sense of dread, it left us wondering where and how she came into money.

Worth a view, but most film-goers will prefer to wait for the DVD.


Similar to a review published on Amazon.