Review: How You Look to Me (2006)

We see so many movies set on one coast or the other--in sunny, smoggy L.A. or crowded, noisy N.Y.C.--that it's genuinely refreshing to see a new film set somewhere in-between.

How You Look to Me is set in Louisville. (The last movie I can remember being set there is Return of the Living Dead.) Yes, this means we get plenty of shots of Churchill Downs, but we also get lots of great views of the rest of the city, courtesy of director J. Miller Tobin and cinematographer Michael Caporale, who make it look like a lovely place indeed.

It's the story of three grad students, all wrestling with romance. William (Bruce Romans, who also wrote the screenplay) is quite the playboy, getting it on with a cute redhead before meeting up with his regular "friend with benefits," Katherine (Kiersten Van Horne), but he doesn't know quite what to do when he meets Jane (Laura Allen), a fellow grad student he is instantly attracted to. William's best friend, Maurice (Kevin Butler) is in love with waitress Kris (Pacey Walker), and it scares him to pieces, while moody loner Park (David S. Jung) attracts the attention of goth chick Sara (Laura Elton).

Observing all this at a distance is their writing instructor, Professor Driskoll (Frank Langella), who likes horses and hangs out at the racetrack with the boys (since William's dad is a wealthy horse breeder). Driskoll seems to be suffering from some disease--we see him taking medication and he often seems frail--but that doesn't stop him from prodding his students to try harder; at one point he very theatrically tosses all their papers into the nearest waste basket. He also pushes William in particular to either invest more of himself in his writing or take a job with his brother at Churchill Downs. William and Jane, meanwhile, start a tentative romance between poetry readings.

The readings themselves play authentically, with some pretty good verse--and some pretty bad verse as well, though that's strictly intentional. The interior scenes are as well filmed as the exterior footage, giving the whole movie a believable, comfortable look.

Unfortunately, Romans's lead performance is anything but comfortable. He's flat and expressionless, even in very emotional scenes. You never get the sense that he's passionate about anything--writing, horses or any of the girls he's sleeping with (or wants to sleep with). The dialog he's written has a realistic feel to it, but he can't deliver it naturally. Butler fares much better as Maurice, looking genuinely tormented over what to do with his feelings for Kris, and Allen is effective and sweet as she conveys resistance to William's increasingly well-meaning advances. Jung's character is already reserved, but he uses that trait to his advantage, making Parks lengthy speech to William on a basketball court all the more surprising and profound.

Langella has, in many ways, the most difficult role in the movie, since he's the best-known member of the cast, but with little screen time. Still, he brings a quiet, gentle authority to a part that could have been an overplayed clichŽ; Driskoll is clearly a man with regrets who doesn't want William wind up in the same place, wondering what could have been if he'd just tried harder.

How You Look to Me concludes without definite resolutions to all of its storylines--kind of like real life--and passes as a pleasant, lovely-looking slice of life in a town we don't get to see enough of at the movies. Like William and Driskoll, though, Tobin and Romans could have tried a little harder--maybe cast someone as William who could better express the emotional range needed to make an audience really care--and reached something truly special.