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THE SHAPE OF THINGS Send This Review to a Friend
Writer-director Neil LaBute's "The Shape of Things" runs pretty much the same as his play from which it springs. It's a well acted, nasty tale involving a self-centered, manipulative and disturbed young art graduate student with a personal mission that is ultimately revealed, and as with other material by LaBute, it deals with male-female conflict and confrontation. The end result is disillusionment. Yet there's another aspect--a lacerating view of the depths to which so-called contemporary art has fallen.
If you've seen some of the junk that passes for art in many of our museums and galleries, you may have a clue as to what's afoot. But the immediate setting involves the impetuous grad student named Evelyn, played with much skill by Rachel Weisz in a reprise of the part she performed on stage in New York and London. She has arrived at the museum where undergraduate English major Adam (Paul Rudd, who also did the part on stage) works part-time as a guard, and she intends a protest defiling a male stature. In the relationship that develops, Evelyn exerts more and more influence over the smitten Adam.
There is another couple involved--Philip, played by Frederick Weller, and Jenny, portrayed by the attractive Gretchen Mol, both of whom did their parts on stage. Complications grow in the relationship between the four. Philip is a boorish character and Jenny, beginning to have second thoughts about him, is feeling more and more of a revived attraction to Adam.
LaBute is less interested in the love aspects per se, and more concerned with the volatility of the relationships and the effects of what Eveyln is pursuing. The film is venomous with the points that it is making, and that accounts for its effectiveness and ability to be involving. LaBute opens it up just enough to make it a movie and not a stage work. The four actors, having worked together in the stage productions, make a strong ensemble on screen as well. A Focus Features release.
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