Third Person is the latest film from writer/director Paul Haggis. It features multiple characters in three separate story lines; and in that sense it's a bit reminiscent of his Oscar winning movie Crash (2005), but whereas the theme of that movie was racism, this one deals in romantic relationships and parental loss. It isn't until the end of the movie that the common thread connecting the various characters is made clear.
While the final 30 minutes or so are fairly satisfying, they cannot make up for the slow pace and flat characterizations that inhabit the rest of the movie. Haggis's work has often been called pretentious and Third Person will do nothing to dispel that reputation.
Liam Neeson plays a writer staying in a hotel in Paris. He's married but separated from his wife (Basinger in a tiny role), and having an affair with a younger woman (Wilde), who is dealing with her own dark secret. In New York, Mila Kunis plays a woman who is trying to regain custody of her young son after being accused of abuse. Her ex, a famous artist played by James Franco, is doing his best to deny her visitation rights. The third story is set in Rome. Adrien Brody is an American, in town on business, who meets an attractive, mysterious woman (Atias) in a bar, and then gets caught up in her efforts to save her young daughter from a kidnapper.
As I already wrote, for the first half of the movie we don't know what connects these various characters or whether they are in fact connected at all. Haggis then begins to toss in a few small clues to let the audience know that everything isn't as it seems. Kunis leaves a note on a table in a hotel room in Manhattan that Wilde picks up from a table in a hotel room in Paris for example. Third Person isn't going for a Sixth Sense type twist though. Rather than a sudden “aha” moment, the truth of the movie's reality is a slowly seeping saturation.
Each of the story lines has a different feel and look that befits the city where it's set. New York is brightly lit and features lots of glass enclosed office space. Paris takes place mostly indoors in the plush hallways and elegantly lit rooms of their hotel. Rome is mostly outdoors on the narrow old streets of the Eternal City with the sun seemingly always about to set.
The A-list cast is fine. Neeson and Wilde are the standouts, while Franco alone seems to be phoning it in. I wish the pace had been quicker and the writing a bit more subtle. I could have gotten by with fewer, “Watch me's!” (You'll know what I mean). Paul Haggis needs to trust his audience more. If he learns to do that he'll seem less condescending. Third Person fails for that very reason.
