Nights at Rodanthe (2008)

Directed by: George C. Wolfe | 97 minutes | drama, romance | Actors: Diane Lane, Richard Gere, Christopher Meloni, Viola Davis, Becky Ann Baker, Scott Glenn, Linda Molloy, Pablo Schreiber, Mae Whitman, Charlie Tahan, Carolyn McCormick, Ted Manson, Ato Essandoh, Terri Denise Johnson, Jessica Lucas, Marisela Ramirez, Kimberly Sauls, Irene Ziegler, Dihedry Aguilar, William D. Hooper, Hal Scarborough, Candy Dennis, Gail Lane, Chookie Ramsey, Mia Clarke, James Franco, John H. Peebles

It is not the first time that Diane Lane and Richard Gere have appeared together on the silver screen. As early as 1984 they appeared together in Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Cotton Club’ and in 2002 they gave intense performances in Adrian Lyne’s erotic drama ‘Unfaithful’. It is therefore no surprise that these two work well together and there is a natural chemistry between the two actors that can transcend any limitations in a script. And this is necessary in the case of ‘Nights in Rodanthe’, a film adaptation of a novel by Nicholas Sparks, whose novels ‘The Notebook’ and ‘Message in a Bottle’ have previously (well) been successfully cast in film form. ‘Nights in Rodanthe’ clearly aims, like the previous Sparks film adaptations, to tell a lived, mature, and inspiring love story, but the film unfortunately comes across as both too pretentious and simple. Even Lane and Gere’s decent acting can’t save ‘Nights in Rodanthe’, although they do come a long way.

The story is somewhat like another movie starring Lane: ‘Under The Tuscan Sun’, in which Lane bought a house in Tuscany to find peace in her life after a divorce and get everything back in order. Furthermore, it is somewhat reminiscent of ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’ in which a middle-aged woman, Angela Basset, is given a new impulse in her life by a new, youthful flame on vacation. In ‘Nights of Rodanthe’ Lane has to make do with someone of the same age, but no doubt many women of all ages will sign for someone with Gere’s looks, even if he is almost sixty years old. In any case, the content is comparable to the aforementioned films. The woman is in a personal relationship crisis and resorts to a holiday destination to get it all sorted out. However, the man she meets here also appears to have issues in this case. These are revealed to the viewer through flashbacks during the course of the film. It is immediately clear that the man is in the pit. And of course that these two lonely and troubled souls will find each other in this new environment. The eventual developments within Lane’s family are nice though, which are somehow quite unexpected, and provide the whole with a welcome portion of maturity and girl power.

It’s a shame that all this is so transparent and everything seems to be taking place according to the machinations of the script. The dialogue is also often not subtle enough to disguise this. When Lane serves dinner for the newly arrived guest, he quickly takes his plate to the kitchen, where she is working, because he does not want to eat alone. It’s all a bit predictable and the characters don’t feel real enough. When it is necessary to get to the core, this is often done through artificial mutual observations and analyses. In addition, the ultimately hopeful, inspiring story is made unnecessarily (melo)dramatic in order to give the whole thing even more weight. The bittersweet coda, which worked well in ‘Message in a Bottle’ and ‘The Notebook’, here makes the story unnecessarily bombastic and sentimental.

But Gere and Lane do what they can to make the story and their characters come across as authentic, and their qualities make the viewer reasonably sympathize with their worries, and it is not inconceivable that the viewer still has to shed a tear in the last act. blink away. The very last shot on the beach is perhaps indicative of the entire film. It’s actually too kitschy, too “corny” to bear, but the look in Lane’s eyes almost makes you want to believe in it.