Son, down

By Dennis Harvey

Son of the Bride marks another return of the midlife crisis.

MIDLIFE-CRISIS movies are seldom very popular, but they do have an appeal for filmmakers, who are mostly white, male, moneyed, and have had too much of it all to avoid experiencing disillusionment at some juncture. Thus films on this theme – excluding the bleak Death of a Salesman-type ones that pop up at festivals every once in a while, inducing any distribution-company folks to go out for coffee after 10 minutes – are mostly glam affairs about extremely successful, perhaps overly busy men of a certain age forced one day by car wreck or cardiac arrest to wake up and smell the nonfat chai latte.

They make up with resentful punky children, realize what an excellent sackmate they've been ignoring for 20 years, or leave materialist Mrs. Wrong at last and realize that their coworker, Miss Warm-Funny-Perfect-and-15-Years-Younger-Too, has been quietly adoring them from behind her lab coat all along. This scenario is totally Kevin Costner whether he's actually acted in it or not, which is to say: bland, comforting, expensively rumpled, and no closer to most viewers' lives than the tableaux in L.L. Bean catalogs. Now there's Oscar nominee Son of the Bride, which is somehow anti-Costner where it counts.

The main wellspring is Ricardo Darín, who beyond being a little old for full Next Antonio Banderas designation (he's 46), is about to take the United States by gust, if not by storm. (Next week his even bigger homegrown hit, the slick urban caper Nine Queens, also opens hereabouts.) He plays a character who's all about soul – realizing he's misplaced it, finding it, expanding it to benefit those who've suffered its lack. His Rafael Belvedere is a veteran high-end restaurateur consumed by the daily, perfectionist staying-afloat of an Italian eatery his immigrant father, Nino (Héctor Alterio), opened decades ago with wife Norma (Norma Aleandro, still best known here for 1985's The Official Story). As anybody who's been in the food biz knows, said industry will make a type A personality out of anyone not born that way, and Rafael probably needed no such makeover. The workaholism eventually cost him his marriage to a visibly bitter ex (Claudia Fontán) and isn't doing him any favors with the young daughter (Gimena Nóbile) or perfect, younger live-in girlfriend (Natalia Verbeke) he can barely make time for. Still, everybody likes Rafael and overlooks his lateness and tantrums and constant cell-phone conversation interruptus; he inspires loyalty, even if he also sometimes seems to be driving it away.

The wake-up-and-smell crisis arrives via a heart attack just serious enough to prompt a requisite cosmic "Whoa." More attention should be paid to a not-yet-estranged kid, and maybe things should be patched up with the angry ex.

Not much "happens" in Son of the Bride, but director-cowriter (with Fernando Castets) Juan José Campanella makes sure the pileup of small corrective incidents feels important enough. Rescued from excess cuddliness by just a hairbreadth – and by some terrific performances – is the main subplot of Rafael's resistance to his father's dream of a splashy church recommitment ceremony with Ma. (The latter has advanced Alzheimer's and barely recognizes either her husband or son, so Rafael fears it will just embarrass all concerned.)

Darín's restraint feels so completely thought through that nothing else here needs to matter. He's a contained actor who excels at the hardest thing: making stillness and reflection seem vivid. It's a lovely, subtle performance, one that fills upscale-dramedy-bonbon Son of the Bride like unexpected creamy nougat.

'Son of the Bride' opens Fri/12 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for show times.