A composer suffering from blank page syndrome meets an attractive tugboat captain in New York, who changes his trajectory.
Rebecca Miller’s seventh feature film, her first since her 2017 documentary about her famous father, playwright Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman), is inspired by the craft of her composer son, Cashel Day -Lewis. This is not, however, a family affair.
Rather, it is the story of a composer, Steven (Peter Dinklage), who has struggled with white score syndrome since the failure of his last opera and his subsequent depression. The medications given to him over and over again by his former psychologist Patricia (Anne Hathaway), who has since become his wife, do not seem to have the desired effects on his anxiety attacks and his lack of inspiration.
By chance, in a Brooklyn bar, Steven meets Katrina (Marisa Tomei), captain of a tugboat from Baton Rouge, self-admittedly “addicted to romance”, who will have the effect of a hurricane on his life. At the same time, the son of Patricia, an obsessive about cleanliness who reconnects with Catholicism, experiences his first romantic feelings with the daughter of their housekeeper.
We think, inevitably, of the cinema of Woody Allen, the undeniable influence of Rebecca Miller’s previous feature-length fiction film, the rather charming Maggie’s Plan (with Greta Gerwig and Ethan Hawke), in 2015. This time even more zany.
Miller, a multidisciplinary artist who was initially a painter, then an actress, before moving behind the camera, had the good idea of calling on Bryce Dressner, guitarist for The National, for her soundtrack. The piece that accompanies the credits is by Bruce Springsteen.
She Came to Me, presented at the opening of the last Berlinale, is a romantic comedy that dissects the genre, with its mise en abyme and its references to other forms of art (opera in particular). It’s not a memorable film, far from it. But despite the shortcomings of its scenario – the twists and turns are improbable even for a fable – it is rather amusing, even moving at times. We smile more than we laugh, but it’s just offbeat and witty enough to stand out from all the formatted romantic comedies of Hollywood cinema.
