The first English-language feature from Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu brings together disparate characters by the same matchmaking method of his Amores Perros: by car accident. Benicio Del Toro, a born-again ex-con, runs over the husband and two daughters of Naomi Watts, and the husband's heart is transplanted anonymously into Sean Penn, a teacher of mathematics and probability, and therefore a deep appreciator of his good fortune, who tracks down and begins to court the widow without, so to speak, baring his chest. (The widow's reaction, when finally told, will echo that of the crap-detecting spectator: "How dare you!") It takes a while for all of this to come clear, inasmuch as the information is doled out in nonsequential fragments that leave it to the audience to arrange in order: a participatory form of storytelling. You eventually get your bearings, and the jumps between lifelines and time zones seem to diminish in distance, closing in toward a climax. Out of the jumble, a unifying point can be perceived: a shattered narrative for shattered lives, a kind of cinematic cubism which enables us to see the before and the after, side by side. To put every puzzle-piece into its proper place is not the principal task. Simply to observe that they belong to the same picture will suffice. The total experience might have been more satisfying if the picture per se were better to look at. Great pains have been taken to achieve a feeling of reality in the people and the places, yet the bloodless, bleached-out color and the shaky, earthquaky camera are but fashionable affectations. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo, Clea DuVall. (2003) — Duncan Shepherd
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