Serena
Starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence
Directed by Susanne Bier
Susanne Bier is no stranger to examining hard-hitting dramatic territory effectively (After The Wedding, A Better World), but the Danish film director strikes out in her latest period piece Serena.
Based on the novel by Ron Rash, the film depicts the bleak and muddy backwoods of North Carolina during the Depression as George Pemberton (Cooper) is building a timber empire with the aid of his feisty new bride Serena (Lawrence). Their relationship grows increasingly complicated once it’s revealed George has fathered a child with another woman, who still lives in their tiny community, and is supporting an illegitimate family.
For starters, though both exceptional in Silver Linings Playbook, Cooper and Lawrence seem far too contemporary for the movie’s era and only serve as attractive distraction. The film benefits from a talented cast, including Rhys Ifans, David Dencik, and Toby Jones, but their characters are so laughably one-dimensional it’s difficult to get pulled in to any sort of engaging interplay.
To its credit, Serena’s look is commendable; Bier’s handheld camerawork plunges the viewer into the stark setting while Richard Bridgland’s production design and Morten Søborg’s cinematography capture the eerie and bleak environment impressively. But, all the crisp aesthetic in the world can’t rescue Christopher Kyle’s trite script and, as the plot unfolds, the story becomes more ridiculous until it’s very hard to care about the outcome of any of the characters.
Despite a strong start, Serena buckles under the weight of a plodding narrative more akin to a Nicholas Sparks novel.
