That's Life (Blake Edwards, 1986)

 

Given the considerably underexamined scenic affluence of its environment, it’s not clear that Blake Edwards’ That’s Life is appropriately titled in any very generally applicable sense – the label of “first world problems” hardly starts to describe it, and between that and the over-indulgence of Jack Lemmon’s familiar mannerisms, I’ve always considered the film a disappointment. On a recent reviewing, those reservations still seem generally applicable, but maybe with age I’ve become more attuned to the genuine anxiety that drives it all, to the expression of a raw insecurity that material comforts can’t suppress and may in some ways (such as by reducing the capacity for genuine spontaneity) even exacerbate. Lemmon plays Harvey Fairchild, a successful architect (but, as he makes clear, no Frank Lloyd Wright) approaching his 60^th birthday, weighed down by hypochondria, blind to the fact that his wife Gillian (Julie Andrews) is quietly dealing with a much more urgent health problem; their adult children and partners arrive, all with their own issues; an old friend of Harvey’s reappears, now a Catholic priest (displaying an intriguing mixture of hard-line doctrine and pragmatic personal behaviour); casual sexual possibilities drift by. The casting of actual family members doesn’t add as much nuanced realism as it might, given the regimented nature of things, and a form of happy equilibrium is ultimately restored all too easily. But there’s much that may linger uncomfortably in the mind – notwithstanding the comment above, Lemmon sometimes (as in a scene where he may actually be trying to induce a heart attack on an exercise cycle) seems agonizingly possessed, and the final professing of need and devotion doesn’t sweep away Harvey’s easy recourse to adultery on two occasions within as many days (albeit that he fails to perform the first time, and that the second time is just plain weird).