Loren & Rose

Rose (Jacqueline Bisset) has a favourite restaurant, a little place in Topanga Canyon where the staff know how to please her and she can get her favourite aviation cocktail with a fresh violet floating on the top. Emerging director Loren (Kelly Blatz) knows this; he has done his research. Flushed with the success of a recent short, he’s in pre-production on his first feature, and he wants to persuade her to star in it. It’s a mutually appealing arrangement. He gets the star attraction of her name; she gets he first decent role for years. That’s he’s genuinely a fan of her work is just the icing on the cake. You’ll have to wait for the cake, though, as the film is divided (like many restaurant-set works before it) into courses. The trouble is that, like Rose, we’ve tasted them all before.

The framework for the film seems apt because Loren is heavily dependent on Rose, even after their first collaboration, and its star actress is really all that this film has got going for it, too. Blatz is adequate, if bland, and there’s actually a very good supporting turn from Paul Sand as waiter Phil, though he doesn’t get much screentime. Bisset has been telling the whole world how thrilled she was to get her role here, and that’s understandable, because, like her character, the excellent roles she had in her youth were followed by a string of overwrought or underwritten ones in horror films of dubious quality. In light of that, this must feel like a relief. Looked at more objectively, however, the dialogue is as flat as the lighting and direction. Despite the quality of her performance, she can’t altogether save it.

The central idea of the film is that whilst their working relationship develops over the course of a few years – glimpsed only through their visits to the restaurant – they also become friends. There’s nothing sexual about it – he’s gay and she pictures him more as a substitute for daughter Denise (Erin Cahill), from whom she has become estranged. She mentors him and gives him advice whilst he receives her stories, making her feel energised and relevant. Writer/director Russell Brown is still young enough to imagine that such a woman might be impressed by a young man rattling on about her more obscure films, thinking him genuinely interested instead of someone who has done his research for the sake of ingratiating himself. Perhaps Loren is genuine and also this naïve; perhaps Rose is getting enough out of it give him a pass. We can’t tell because there just isn’t enough texture to the story.

The discussions between the two range from reflections on the film industry, which are not particularly unusual but may impress those who don’t know much about it, to artistic and philosophical ideas. There isn’t much depth to any of it, and this is all the more problematic because there really isn’t much else to focus on. There is some discussion of food, with an assortment of appealing dishes brought to the table, and Loren talks us through the predictable arc of his career. Rose nears the end of her life and there is an effort to suggest that this gives her special insights, but all we get is very prosaic stuff. This is worth watching for Bisset fans and those with minimal experience of similarly framed films, but something of a disappointment otherwise.