Did you know that Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal’s father, Stephen, has directed a daunting mountain of TV movies? It’s true. One of them is The Patron Saint of Liars, based on the novel by Ann Patchett. Unfortunately, Steven isn’t quite as talented as his kids and the movie in question is inversely as awesome as its totally awesome title.
Rose is a woman who can’t help but run away from the people who love her most - and when she finds out she’s pregnant she abandons her loving husband to move across the country to a Catholic shelter for unwed mothers. The only thing she truly loves is driving. At the Catholic home she marries the handyman, Son, has her baby, and runs away from them, too, after 15 years (or approximately 45 minutes of meandering and episodic plot and about 30 Target and Nair commercials).
In the end, after a lot of driving, which she loves and which everyone always mentions, for some completely unknown reason that has nothing to do with the story, she comes to her senses and returns to her family (the second family, that is. Her first family is left forgotten and abandoned). Hugs all around.
What interested me most about this movie was how perfectly the handyman, Son, is as a romantic interest in this movie and for the entire Lifetime Movie Network demographic (the LMN demographic, in case you didn’t know, consists of women, 25-55 who are wearing sweats, thinking about folding clothes, and eating low-fat yogurt as I write this (I am one of the masses!)).
He’s not adventurous or dashing or ambitious. He’s simple. He just wants to love and be loved. Best of all, he quickly and accurately fixes things around the house, from carpentry to wiring to gutter cleaning. He won’t say anything about your sweatpants. I mean, his name is SON - what more could a woman want? I’m sure LMN women everywhere swooned - oh, to have a man who complains when you aren’t around and who would fix that light fixture in the kitchen! Oh, to have a man totally understand that you love to drive and that this is the only defining characteristic of your personality!
The other thing that really caught my attention in this movie was how bad God seems to be at special effects. He performs two miracles during the movie - one near the beginning and one near the end - and he’s not winning any Emmys for His work. He’s not even getting nominated. It looked like all He did, really, was shake the camera so that it looked like the ground was rumbling and rent a couple of smoke machines.
In the end, though, The Patron Saint of Liars is one of the more directionless, wandering TV movies that I’ve seen yet. The plot isn’t so much a plot as a string of things that happen. Maybe Ann Patchett or Steven Gyllenhaal misunderstood the meaning of “character-driven” and took it literally?
I’d be curious if the book was any better than the movie. In any case, I bet you’d have to sit through fewer Nair commercials.
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December 12, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Pingback from TV Movies Soaps » I watched The Patron Saint of Liars, A Lifetime Original Movie
December 12, 2007 at 2:58 am
poetloverrebelspy
I assume it’s Liars, as in the title of the post, and not Lairs per the actual post?
BTW, “thinking about folding clothes” totally sums up my evening tonight!
December 12, 2007 at 1:12 pm
seaswell
thanks, poetlover(etc., etc.) - all fixed.
(for those of you who don’t know, poet used to be my extremely patient copyeditor at our college newspaper)
(and, for those of you who haven’t noticed, i am a terrible, terrible typo addict. i’m trying to get help.)
December 13, 2007 at 6:15 pm
gspot
The book is much better than the movie. In the book, Rose never returns - a downbeat ending that was immediately jettisoned when Patchett-Kaufman, the production company which supplies content to Lifetime and similar networks, bought the rights and signed a serviceable writer, more known for daytime TV than for features, for the teleplay.
Unlike a film director and especially unlike a film director who helms his own project, a television director is under a mountain of constraints having more to do with time, budget and market forces rather than artistic choices, and even the best actors in the world can’t weave magic from a leaden script. Stephen has a reputation in Hollywood for being sensitive to child actors and especially to female actors. It’s because of this that a good deal of his bread-and-butter assignments have been in the realm of “women’s pictures”, even when his heart hasn’t entirely been in it.
Still, you have to understand that it was hack work like this which paid for Maggie’s four years at Columbia University (and Jake’s two years), even at the cost of their father’s own deferred dreams. He addresses his “whoring” TV work metaphorically in his poem “Night Job”:
I’m putting on the red dress, Ma,
and heading back onto the trucker’s lane
to spread my legs (all hose pulled tight
and bra that pushes me toward heaven)
to do my due
and give a few (the tired and poor)
a swim along this once pure shore
(my closest pal the crack boy down on
his scarred fours who sells the minutes
on the city’s parking meters just off Fifth
at half the price).
Negotiate. I know my job, for everything’s
negotiable and what remains is that small
moment in the hay
where I must always
give my heart away.
If you want to take a look at films that Stephen’s truly proud of, rent (or watch out for on TV) Paris Trout with Dennis Hopper, Barbara Hershey and Ed Harris; A Killing in a Small Town with Barbara Hershey and Brian Dennehy; and most of all, Waterland with Jeremy Irons and Ethan Hawke. All are erotic, visceral, shocking, beautiful and heartbreaking.
All of these films, by the way, were featured at the recent Stephen Gyllenhaal Film Festival at Cinestudio in Hartford, Connecticut.
December 13, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Liana
“Maybe Ann Patchett or Steven Gyllenhaal misunderstood the meaning of “character-driven” and took it literally?”
AH HA ha ha ha!!!
Perfect ending to the post. LOVE it.
December 24, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Joe
The book is worth a read. If you buy (or check out), get the most recent paperback version — it has additional info in it by Patchett. She writes about the shooting of the TV movie (as I recall, she was not too impressed with the changes made for the movie).
But if you want to read Patchett, you may want to try Magician’s Assistant - It’s quite good.