Ah, modern love. Ah, the phrase "modern love." It's not fair to say that Bruce Guthrie and Alan Hruska's The Man on Her Mind feels like a stale old stage play, but only because it's actually a stale young stage play, by Hruska, which debuted in London in 2012. The haplessly uncinematic movie version imports main cast members Amy McAllister and Samuel James, along with their uncorrected theatrical mugging, for a tale of two loner Manhattanites who fashion imaginary lovers for themselves in each other's images. When that seems limiting, they get together for real. That seems limiting too, which is the one promising insight here, but Hruska and co-director Guthrie don't explore it honestly or thoroughly enough. If nothing else, The Man on Her Mind serves as a lesson in dramaturgy: Even being figments of other characters' imaginations is no excuse for characters to seem so contrived. At least the actors themselves are easy to root for, in spite of being so smothered by an apparent top-down aversion to naturalism. What a shame that the truest-sounding notes in this whole movie are their adopted American accents.
Comments are closed.
