3/5
Daniele Luchetti’s The Ties is anchored by a stellar performance from Alba Rohrwacher – which alone is almost worth the price of admission – but this overwrought relationship drama doesn’t quite hit the mark. Which is too bad – there’s so much here to like. In some ways, this is a fairly standard divorce story – infidelity, emotional outbursts, children caught in the middle. Here, it’s the story structure that makes Luchetti’s film unique. We’ve given these shifts in perspective – beginning with the wife’s viewpoint, then shifting to the husband’s – that don’t exactly make this revolutionary, but it certainly makes the narrative a bit more interesting. Well, it’s interesting until the film devolves into a brief section where we’re supposed to feel sorry for the cheating husband who can’t choose between spending time with his mistress or spending time his wife and kids. And the film leaves us with the impression that the wife (with whom we spent the first half hour, getting her intimate perspective on the relationship) has actually been a terrible “shrew” for years. What keeps the film from being completely insufferable is a final shift in perspective for the film’s final act – a delirious denouement that shows just how damaging this has all been on the children who have lived through their parents bitterness, selfishness, and fighting. It’s this lovely and cathartic moment in an otherwise fairly pedestrian film.
