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Filmed on Coney Island, it's another summer tragedy with rose-tinted glasses. Kate Winslet plays a restaurant waitress. She used to be a theater actress. Later, she stopped acting because of cheating and marriage failure. She took her child to marry a fat and ugly amusement park carousel conductor. The conductor was widowed and had a twenty-six-year-old daughter from his ex-wife. He dropped out of school and married a gang boss, so he broke off ties. The woman suddenly appeared, begging her father's forgiveness and protection, and moved into this small home in the amusement park-indeed a "homeless shelter" for the three adults and one kid.
Justin Timberlake played a lifeguard. He was a graduate student at NYU, wrote screenplays, and worked odd jobs in Coney Island during the summer. Formerly a NYU literature undergraduate, then enlisted as a sailor after Pearl Harbor. Sounds like deja vu? I feel like this character is inspired by JD Salinger. Salinger's youth is set in the same period as the movie. He first took a writing class, was forced to enlist in the army, and returned to write Catcher In The Rye. Isn't the lifeguard on the beach the catcher of the sea? He sat in a high chair, trying to find and rescue drowning people.
The drowning man he caught was Kate Winslet, and then the young wife of the mob boss. But their sinking lives were far from what he could afford.
Everyone in this movie was set up to fail, and they did fail. So sigh more and more. Especially every second of their happiness is a comma of tragedy. Tragedy, or rather their fate, in the pages of a summer, there are two blanks at the beginning, and several times in the middle (soft commas), but there is still a full stop at the end of the final judgment. The verdict is that everyone reserves each other, and no one reserves hope.
Kate Winslet's youngest son in the play is very interesting. A red head, skipping classes, stealing money, watching movies, and arson and pranks. He is a figurative expression of his mother's emotions and madness, and his arson is her mother's self-destruction.
It's smooth to watch (light and shadow, filming, and performance are all great), and it's very unpleasant to watch. The film was given low marks by critics, but if you are like me, you are waiting for one of his films every year, you should watch it too. The characters deserve each other, and we deserve this movie.
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