POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT!! Annette Benning is unnervingly convincing as a grieving widow, who had a seemingly happy marriage cut short by her husband's death. He's played by a very self-conscious Ed Harris. She wallows for a while in her upmarket designer house, living in a sort of plot driven cocoon, populated only by her neighbour (a very creepy Robin Williams) and her daughter. Then she meets hubby's lookalike (also a very self-conscious Ed Harris) and woos him, but never tells him why she is so besotted. He falls for her, big time, and it takes him a very long time to twig the reason for her obsession. She meanwhile behaves like Jimmy Stewart in "Vertigo" and virtually forces him to dress and behave like her deceased hubby. I won't give away any more of the rather unlikely plot, but Benning's supremely selfish character is impossible to warm to. There is sympathy for Ed Harris (number 2), but he's unobservant to the point of stupidity. The very end of the film is seriously unpleasant, as we (I assume) are supposed to celebrate the liberation Benning feels as a result of exploiting this poor schmuck whose life she has turned upside down.
Review of The Face of Love
The Face of Love
(2013)
Glossy drama with an unlikely plot about a self-absorbed widow who seduces a dead-ringer for her dead husband
2 May 2015
Warning: Spoilers