Monday Movie ~ 50 Shades? Better = If I Were You

All the chat about Marcia Gay Harden just now centres around her role in a movie currently doing the rounds Fifty Shades of Grey , "an erotic romance" adapted from the novel of the same name by British author E. L. James, first installment in the Fifty Shades trilogy. Sigh - oh another of those. Cinema-going is getting more and more like a dragged-out annual mini-series experience these days.

We won't be seeing Fifty Shades of Grey - we can see 'em every day just by gazing upon the downy covering atop our dearest one's noggin. If this review at The Rambling Curl is a fair assessment, we'd be giving the movie a wide berth anyway!

Marcia Gay Harden is, I understand, one of Fifty Shades' pivotal characters. We watched her a few nights ago doing a great turn in a little known film now available on Netflix: If I Were You. This was a rare occasion when both husband and I enjoyed a film with equal enthusiasm. If I Were You is fun, serious and insightful all at the same time. Oddly, very oddly I thought, is the fact that Rotten Tomatoes' professional reviewers, 12 of them - 11 male, gave the movie a hefty thumbs down. The one exception, by gender and opinion, a single female critic, liked it. Hmm. Thereby could probably hang a different blog post - but I'll not bother.

If I Were You is certainly not a chick-flick in the usual sense of that description. The film has elements of farce and some darkish humour all wrapped around a serious theme of infidelity. Marcia Gay Harden carries the movie as wife of a philandering guy. Opening scenes depict her as a hapless, fairly helpless woman probably in her 40s, whose better half, she discovers, turns out to be less better than expected. She gradually develops a spine in some rather unconventional ways, in the process also teaching her husband's "pretty, ditzy young thing" a few lessons along the way, as she learns some herself. The theme is not the straightforward love triangle plot you might expect from what I've written so far. There are several unexpected twists and turns.

If any passing reader intends to seek out the movie on Netflix or other outlet carrying it, I'd advise to just watch it "cold", without reading up on plot detail. I suspect that's the best way to experience this film. We watched it that way, found it almost accidentally, when searching for a movie without beaucoup guns, violence, and CGI-ridden slam-banginess. If I Were You has no guns, no CGI, no violence, but many laughs and wry, chuckle-worthy moments.

Because sometimes Monday is for music, and I know a song of the same title as the film discussed above, here's "If I Were You", written and sung by a favourite artist, k.d. lang. After her song there's a brief interview with Jay Leno.