Diane Keaton, Shoot the Moon

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

David Ansen

“…. Shoot the Moon can also boast of excellent performances and Parker's most controlled direction to date. Yet these many virtues don't add up to a completely satisfying film….”

“Parker and Goldman's triumph is their portrait of Faith and the superbly choreographed scenes with the children, a study in benignly controlled chaos. We're not used to seeing Keaton as a mother, yet she inhabits her role so completely, with a warm, slightly frayed maternal spontaneity, that you'd think she'd spent all her life around children. Faith is obviously a great mom precisely because she takes her figrs for granted--and so does the movie. The feminist quotation marks hovering over most performances of a Jill Clayburgh or Jane Fonda are mercifully absent: Faith is refreshingly unrepresentative, totally specific. As the oldest and most vulnerable of her daughters, Dana Hill gives an equally honest performance … The awkward and tender seduction scene between Weller and Keaton is a great moment--topped only by the haunting sight of Keaton, alone in her bathtub smoking a joint, haltingly singing an old Beatles song that represents all that was good about her marriage.”

“It's in Finney's character that the real conflict of the movie resides … Finney gives a superb, implosive performance, but it's his side of the story that gets shortchanged….”

David Ansen
Newsweek, January 25, 1982

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