Short Take: Intriguing, but lacks competence in some areas

Director: Udayan Prasad (Opa!, My Son the Fanatic)

Screenwriter: Erin Dignam (8, Loved, Denial)

Cast: William Hurt (The Incredible Hulk, Vantage Point), Maria Bello (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The Jane Austen Book Club), Kristen Stewart (Twilight: New Moon, Adventureland), Eddie Redmayne (Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Savage Grace)

Length: 1 hour 42 minutes

Synopsis: Brett Hansen (Hurt) has just been released after six years of incarceration when he meets Gordy (Redmayne), an awkward young Native American on his first trip away from the reservation, and Martine (Stewart), a lonely young woman looking for someone to love her.  The trio embarks on a road trip to find Brett’s ex-wife May (Bello).  As the group grows closer, Brett’s past with May is slowly revealed through a series of flashbacks.

Analysis: Set primarily in post-Katrina New Orleans and loosely based on a column journalist Pete Hamill wrote for The New York Post, The Yellow Handkerchief is a character study of people who share one thing: the desire to connect with another human being.  The characters desperately try to communicate with each other on a meaningful level, but despite their efforts, they are far more adept at misconnections and misunderstandings.  Whether through pride or bias or any number of obstacles, connection doesn’t come easily.  But as difficult as it may be for them to form meaningful relationships, when they get past their issues and focus on mutual affection, the connection becomes transcendent.  In essence, director Udayan Prasad and screenwriter Erin Dignam have made a film that shows the slow journey four people take on the road to finding someone to love.

The journey begins when Brett, Gordy, and Martine interact for the first time in a small-town store.  Through a largely dialogue-less scene, Prasad establishes both who the characters are and why they so desperately need each other.  We first meet Brett, a quiet and mysterious man freshly released from prison.  Hurt, who often brings a degree of gravity and wisdom to his roles, plays the character as a man of few words who nonetheless possesses a profound ability to understand the people around him.  Prasad films the scene from Brett’s point of view and his observations not only introduce the other two characters, but also establish his interest in them.

Brett first examines Gordy, an awkward young man whose bluntness often makes people around him uncomfortable.  Gordy lingers in the store desperate to attract any young woman he encounters with little success.  His desperation for love is clear from those few moments and the characterization carries throughout the rest of the film.

More important, however, is Brett’s first glimpse of Martine whom he first sees from afar.  She dances toward a young man, clearly thinking they share an intimate relationship, but her confidence is suddenly shaken when his girlfriend approaches. At that point, Martine runs off seeming both embarrassed and horrified.  She immediately fascinates Brett not only because she seems in such an emotionally complicated state, but also because, in a smart trick of costuming, she wears the same colors Brett’s ex-wife May wore when they first met.  Throughout the film, May and Martine are linked, visually by Prasad and verbally by Dignam, to not only enhance Brett’s desire to return to May, but also distinguish Martine as an extraordinary person in Brett’s life.

This scene, which expertly establishes the characters and their relationships for the rest of the film, succeeds for two reasons.  The first is the strength of the lead performances.  Since there is little dialogue, Prasad relies heavily on his actors’ body language to convey the characters’ personalities.  Despite having no lines in the scene, Hurt conveys his character’s desire to nurture Gordy and Martine by the way he stares at them.  Stewart also plays her character well, with a combination of vulnerability and confidence that makes Martine infinitely intriguing.  Redmayne is perhaps the weakest element of the cast, though he commits fully to Gordy’s awkwardness.  Scenes in which he aggressively insults Martine don’t help build empathy for the character and Gordy’s constant nervous movements can become distracting.  The second strength is Prasad’s direction.  His visual style, with its rich colors and adept use of subjective framing, makes the scene subtly telling without making the story elements overly obvious.

However, as interesting as the direction and performances can be, the film’s major weakness is often the dialogue.  At one point, Martine and Brett share the following exchange.  “Do you cry?” Martine asks.  “No.  I don’t anymore,” Brett says with the faintest hint of surprise.  “You can cry around me, if you want to,” she responds.  Though Stewart and Hurt try to deliver the lines naturally, they still feel a little too constructed.  The script seems saturated with unrealistic discourse, and had Dignam put as much effort into making the characters and situations as authentic as the actors and Prasad do, The Yellow Handkerchief might have been a better film.

Rating: 6.5