accessAtlanta

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Philip Seymour Hoffman has done neither himself, nor his brother, Gordy, any favors by agreeing to star in "Love Liza," which Gordy wrote. The script isn't very good; not even someone as gifted as Hoffman (the actor) can make it work. And by agreeing to act in his brother's movie, what was undoubtedly meant as a supportive gesture, makes it look like the script was so very bad that only a close family member would be willing to give it a shot (that, or else Hoffman the actor owes Hoffman the writer a lot of money).

Hoffman plays Wilson -- no relation to the volleyball -- a Web site designer who's trying to cope with his wife's suicide. Deeply in shock, he wanders about their home as if he's never seen it before. He can't bring himself to sleep in their bed, so he curls up on the floor. He goes to work mostly because, like Everest, it's there.

Liza left a suicide note, and Wilson cannot, will not, read it. Perhaps it's because it would make her death too real and might jolt him out of his protective glaze-over. Or it might be he wants to blame himself and is sure the note will confirm it was something he did. His strong-willed mother-in-law (the always good Kathy Bates), whom he's not gotten along with very well, badly wants the note read. So we have two fundamentally at-odds forms of grieving. She must read the note to feel better. He must feel better to read the note.

Desperately in search of anything to dull the pain, Wilson takes to huffing gas fumes. When he learns that the fuel for model airplanes is stronger (and less suspicious than sticking his nose under the pump at the local Shell station), he takes up model airplanes as a hobby.

It's difficult to believe that Hoffman (the writer) has ever experienced the death of a spouse. Or, if he has, his ideas would've been better served by another writer. It's as if he had two story lines in his head -- one about a bewildered widower in a lot of pain and another about the gas-sniffing phenomenon -- and he decided to tie them together. But in doing so, he's dishonored the act of grieving. Once Wilson settles on something as oddball as inhaling gas fumes as his fix of choice, his efforts to deal with his bereavement lose credibility.

If Hoffman the writer and director Todd Louiso, who co-starred with him in "High Fidelity," had truly pushed the picture into gallows-humor farce, they might have had an intriguing movie. Bluntly put, "Love Liza" chickens out. Or else cheats.

Hoffman is as good a leading man (if that's the right word) as he is a character actor. He's the reason (possibly the only reason) to watch "Love Liza." Hoffman makes Wilson a dazzling schlump. His childlike (childish?) sense of loss and abandonment is palpable. This man has been firebombed, and Hoffman shows us every blank stare, every shuffling mumble, every impetuous idiocy.

But the actor has no place to go. He's stuck in a continuous cycle of anguish and eccentricity. He acts his heart out, but what difference can it make in a movie that's backed away from its emotional core?