Close to home

This one may take a little persuading, but you really should see the new film Diane (MC-86, Hulu), for the title performance by Mary Kay Place if nothing else.  But there is plenty else.  This is the first dramatic feature from Kent Jones, whom I knew back in the day, when he was Marty Scorsese’s video archivist and used to drop into my video store in Pittsfield when home for a visit.  He went on to make documentaries with Scorsese, and then on his own, notably Hitchcock/Truffaut.  He’s also been a critic and editor at Film Comment, and director of film programming at Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival.  He wrote and directed this character study based on his mother, who happens to have been my son’s favorite grade school teacher (where she recruited students regularly for help at the soup kitchen that figures prominently in the film).  Her son in the story is quite the opposite of Kent, an on-again off-again heroin addict who is a continual trial to our heroine.  

Though filmed in Kingston NY, the story is set in Western Mass and the locations feel awfully familiar, wintry and gritty.  Besides Mary Kay Place, for whom I’ve had a fondness going back to Mary Hartman in the mid-70s (and later, The Big Chill and many others, most notably the long-lost Manny & Lo, also notable as Scarlett Johansson’s first leading role – where, oh where can I re-watch that?), the film offers a welcome showcase for a number of older actresses (look, there’s Estelle Parsons from Bonnie & Clyde!).  Diane is an aging baby boomer (my cohort exactly), who makes up for past guilt and current loss by continually helping others.  Some communal scenes of tight-knit family and friends are reminiscent of Big Chill characters at double the age (though more working class, as several husbands had died early from PCB-related cancer – unspecified shout-out to “The GE” in Pittsfield).  

This is a film about what and who we lose along the way, but also about opportunities for connection, redemption, and ecstasy.  It’s subtle and sad, elliptical and quiet, but humorous too, well worth the attention that it requires.  In fact, worth a second look, to see the subtleties missed on first viewing.  The film belongs to Mary Kay as Diane, but she’s a jewel in a finely-wrought setting.