A movie starring Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, made during a time that represented the peak of their careers can’t be too bad. I confess that I hadn’t heard much about ‘Falling in Love‘ nor about its director Ulu Grosbard, and when this film came my way I became quite curious to find out what the reasons were. Watching the film made in 1984 answered my question. The movie is really not too bad. Streep and De Niro are beautiful, charismatic and intelligent, clearly enjoying working together and carrying the film, but the feeling at the end is one of a miss and a disappointment. “Falling in Love” seems much too trivial compared to the immense talent of the two actors who already had two Oscar awards each in their records in 1984.
One of the reasons for the disappointment is that, already in 1984, the formula of the film had been used far too often. The tradition of American productions of this kind has its source in the films about illicit relationships and broken families of the 40s and it appeared often in the 70s (example: ‘Kramer vs. Kramer‘ – great blockbuster, also staring Meryl Streep), being updated for to place it in the modern American landscape, mostly urban (and often Manhattan). The heroes of films in this category are baby boomers, they usually belong to the middle class, they don’t really have material worries, so that they can focus (on screens at least) on their own emotional problems. The idea of chance encounters and reunions (in the case of this film on the train) without which the story would not exist is not terribly original either. Frank and Margaret, the film’s heroes, are married and reasonably happy when the option of true happiness and capital L Love comes their way. Can the relationship between them be maintained at the level of friendship? Or if that is not possible in that of a chaste bond? Do the heroes have the right to deny themselves happiness? And if not, who pays the price for their happiness? What happens to the families in danger of breaking up, to the kids and to the abandoned partners? ‘Falling in Love‘ approaches these questions quite lightly, the expressive power and (outer and inner) beauty of the lead heroes dominate the screen and is provided as a solution to moral dilemmas. The heroes literally ask themselves several times ‘what am I doing?’ and keep doing what they’re doing.
The characters surrounding the heroes are rather pale and inconsistent sketches. This seems to me to have been the main problem with the script, along with the lack of memorable lines. It is assumed that the two intelligent heroes could articulate their feelings in words, but this does not happen. Fortunately for the director, or maybe that was his idea, Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro make up for the fragility of the text with looks and body language that say everything that needs to be said. I can’t fail to mention the presence of Harvey Keitel, an actor I like immensely, who has a delicious supporting role as Frank’s male companion and counterpoint. In fact, the scenes in which the two protagonists hide and then explain their feelings to their respective confidant friends are among the most successful, seeming to be a kind of exemplification of psychologist John Gray‘s book ‘Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus‘, which was to appear a few years later. Otherwise, too many coincidences, too many repeating scenes in the crowd, although the streets of Manhattan, China Town and Central Station look well filmed in the style of French New Wave films. Almost four decades after its making, ‘Falling in Love‘ is not a film to be avoided or only suitable for Christmas programs, but the main reasons why it is worth seeing are still Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro. Which, of course, is no small thing.