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the audience applauded

Better Late Then Never

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Plot In A Paragraph: Adrienne (Goldie Hawn) and Jack Saunders (John Heard) have a perfect marriage, but Adrienne begins to suspect Jack of an affair when he is spotted in New York when he is supposed to be out if town. All of that is forgotten when her world comes crashing down after the death of Jack in a car accident. Deceived starts off very good and gets even better before it sadly becomes ludicrous, predictably ludicrous in fact. I've always had a soft spot got Hawn, as I used I have a crush on her as a kid things like "Private Benjamin", "Wild Cats", "Best Friends" and "Overboard" had me smitten and when I saw her again on "Bird On A Wire" the year before this, I knew I still had a thing for her, despite her advancing years. Anyway here she is excellent in a different type of role. She pretty much carries the movie on her own. Sadly the same can't be said for Heard. He ridiculously over acts. Ashley Peldon (The young Pheobe Cates from "Drop Dead Fred") is good as their daughter. In fact she puts in a better performance than Heard.It's a shame it ended so poorly as it started so well.

Is this the most innovative movie to ever come down the pike? No. Is a great deal of its appeal style over substance? Yes. But sometimes that's not a bad thing.Solidly acted thriller with a much more serious Goldie Hawn than usual. Watching it you get a sense that the Goldie you're watching is much closer to the private woman than the delightfully ditzy girl that was her stock in trade.Since the story is set in the rarefied world or museums and authenticators the settings are often plush and well appointed. However even though the main couple's home is very swank they apparently live in the most slowly renovated building in the world.Lead by Goldie all the performers give strong performances although, excepting John Heard, most of the roles are quite secondary. A decent thriller with an easy to figure out mystery at its core this is still quite a lot of fun thanks to committed work from all involved. A nice showcase for Goldie Hawn, who get a chance to uses pieces of her talent not always in evidence.

Single Manhattan art restorer Adrienne (Hawn) is stood up on a blind date in a restaurant but sees Jack Saunders - a charming man at another table. They meet where she works the next day as he drops off a piece to be restored. He is a museum curator. They have a lot in common and their 'meet-cute' evolves into a date and they more than hit it off. After a whirlwind courtship they are married.Flash-forward five years and they remain happily together with an adorable daughter. Their business interests coincide and they share a group of like-minded friends/co-workers as well as a chic and cozy apartment in a trendy neighborhood and enough to afford a young housekeeper. They don't appear to have it all but seem to have everything worth having and about as much as anyone should realistically ask for out of life.Things take a dramatic turn for the worse when the resident expert appraiser (Rubes) at the museum is found dead by Adrienne. It is an apparent suicide. This coincides with the discovery that a necklace in the museum worth $4.5 million is a forgery. A number of suspicious events Jack explains away to Adrienne with perfectly rational answers precedes an argument, a frank declaration of not feeling trusted and his departure from their home.Jack almost immediately perishes in a fiery car wreck leaving Adrienne a grieving and perplexed widow raising a very young daughter without a father. Her suspicions about him are momentarily obscured by having to explain death to her child and begin life anew with a gaping chasm once filled by a man who beguiled her so completely and capably handled so many responsibilities for her and their daughter.Those suspicions arise again exacerbated by revelations that the man she thought she knew was a different person altogether. The web of falsehoods is bold but not particularly intricate. The man who weaved them was also not very smooth or even adequately careful in many different aspects of his plan. Adrienne needs do little more than some elementary sleuthing following each massive lead to the conclusion.The shock for the heroine and the viewer rests in how much of a commitment the baddie makes in playing it all out and what he was prepared to leave behind in seeing it through. His play was a long-haul deception measured and executed over years leaving him no room for emotional attachments. This is a criminal type looking for his only big score before he takes early retirement.At any point he might have become seduced by the lie he was living and decided to abandon his material long-term objective to enjoy what he had. But a creature like this doesn't have the capacity to appreciate the things that normal people do or understand their value.John Heard's performance transitioning between being Prince Charming to volatile monster is convincing at all stages of his metamorphosis. When he begins haunting his own house while only pretending to be dead there is a strong vibe of eeriness. He appears to be something vastly different than human though not quite demonic or alien.A surprise hit in fall 1991 it marked the beginning of the late stage of Goldie Hawn's erratic but nevertheless quite successful career in feature films. She was in her mid-40's playing a character at least a decade younger. Whether the role suits her or not she at least was in something. She has only been in 31 productions. The English director Damian Harris has himself only made a dozen movies in 30 years.Beatrice Straight's last movie.Partly filmed at Toronto's world-renowned Royal Ontario Museum one may view an exterior shot of the beautiful old building before it was vandalized when a glass modern architecture monstrosity was erected on the Northwest wing facing Bloor Street. It's slanted glass remains a delightful canvas for the modern art the Toronto pigeon and seagull population craft upon it with their feces.

It never completely gets you involved. Oh, it does start out on a suspenseful note. The idea is very clever- a successful, attractive New York woman meets the man who seems to be Mr. Right (a successful artifact dealer), and their marriage is everything she hoped it would be, until he suddenly and mysteriously dies. But when she looks into his background, she finds that what she knew about him turns out to be false, and he may have been involved in criminal activity. Also, the music and visual style set the right mood. And Goldie Hawn, not known for film roles like this, gives a respectable performance. But as the film moves along, it becomes increasingly confusing and unbelievable, finally reaching a ridiculous ending. In fact, the closing scene is so confusing, it's hard to tell where it takes place. It looks like someone with a great deal of talent but a short attention span got bored with the film and rushed it to an ending because he was sick of it. Too bad, because it had great promise.