Miami Rhapsody Blu-ray Review
When They Were Young
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, July 18, 2011
Before
Sex and the City made Sarah Jessica Parker world-famous, she was a veteran actress
who'd appeared on Broadway as a child and in supporting parts in films such as
Footloose,
L.A.
Story and
Ed Wood. Three years prior to
slipping on Carrie Bradshaw's Manolos, Parker played
the lead in writer-director David Frankel's
Miami Rhapsody, which, despite superficial
differences and a PG-13 rating, could be seen as a sort of "dry run" for the kind of sophisticated
urban romantic comedy that would shortly launch Parker into stardom. Frankel would go on to
direct half a dozen episodes of
Sex and the City, as well as several others HBO series (
Rome,
Band of Brothers,
From the Earth to the Moon), before achieving box office success in 2006
with
The Devil Wears
Prada.
Miami Rhapsody received very limited distribution, which may have had something to do with its
style. In both subject matter and technique, Frankel drew heavily on Woody Allen's approach in
films like
Annie Hall,
Manhattan and
Hannah and Her Sisters, and even though
Frankel added
his own personal stamp -- notably a female protagonist's point of view unlike any you'd find in
an Allen film -- the association was too strong to overlook. (It didn't help that Frankel cast Mia
Farrow in a major role.) The mid-Nineties were the low point of Allen's reputation after his
break-up with Farrow and marriage to Farrow's adopted daughter, and a film evoking associations
with Allen was no doubt deemed too hot to handle by Disney, which co-financed and released the film.
Miami Rhapsody is no overlooked masterpiece, but today it's possible to enjoy the film for
Frankel's often clever dialogue and for performances by an interesting cast, many of whom
would go on to bigger and better things. Frankel obviously has a great eye for casting. Just as he
spotted Emily Blunt for
Prada when she was relatively unknown, he filled
Miami Rhapsody's
ensemble with interesting faces, some familiar, some not, who were perfectly suited to their
parts. Included among them was supermodel (and occasional criminal defendant) Naomi
Campbell, who gave probably the best performance of her career in the role she was born to play:
a bored, self-indulgent fashion model.
The film's framing device is a visit by Gwyn Marcus (Parker) to a new doctor, whom we never
see because the camera puts us in the doctor's position. Since it's Gwyn's first visit, the doctor is
taking basic information, including whether Gwyn is married. And thereby hangs a tale.
Gwyn's live-in boyfriend, Matt (Gil Bellows, soon to be the man
Ally McBeal follows to law
school), proposed to her on a dock, and Gwyn said yes, even though her family is an array of
cautionary tales about marriages gone awry. Her parents, Nina and Vic (Farrow and Paul
Mazursky), barely communicate anymore; indeed, each one prefers to confide in Gwyn, with her
mother airing suspicions about her father's cheating, and her father denying that anything's going
on. Then, to Gwyn's astonishment, her
mother confesses that she's recently started an affair with
a much younger man: Antonio (Antonio Banderas, still perfecting his English), a Cuban male
nurse who works at the retirement home where Gwyn's grandmother now resides.
Gwyn's siblings don't instill any greater confidence about marriage. Her younger sister, Leslie
(Carla Gugino, most recently everyone's favorite defense lawyer on
Californication), is a
hopeless romantic who married for love. The vows she wrote and recites with her pro football
player husband, Jeff (former Houston Oilers safety Bo Easton), are so corny that everyone at the
wedding can barely stifle their giggles. But romance quickly gives way to real life, and before the
honeymoon is over, Leslie and Jeff are quibbling over their differences. Among other things,
Jeff's parsimony about finances collides with Leslie's free spending (money being a common
source of marital strife). Shortly after the wedding, Leslie is out shopping with Gwyn and runs
into an old high school acquaintance, Mitchell (Jeremy Piven, long before
Entourage). Now a
successful dentist, he confesses to Leslie that he used to have a crush on her. Uh-oh.
Gwyn's brother, Jordan (Kevin Pollak), is struggling with the upheaval that some marriages
experience when children arrive. His wife, Terri (Barbara Garrick), now pregnant with their
second child and caring for their first, is exhausted and hormonal, and neither partner feels as
they did when they first got together. Jordan has fallen into an affair with Kaia (Campbell), the
wife of his business partner. The situation is fraught with explosive possibilities.
As each new revelation shakes her faith, Gwyn goes home and shares her concerns with Matt,
who responds with some version of that-won't-be-us. But her doubts continue, and the situation
gets more complicated when Gwyn, who writes for a magazine, is offered an enticing job writing
for a local TV show but with one big downside: she has to relocate from Miami to Orlando. At
about the same time, Matt, who works as a zoologist at the Miami Metro Zoo, is offered a
fellowship . . .
in Zaire. Now the couple really is faced with some hard decisions.
Miami Rhapsody is entirely dialogue-driven, but Frankel is clever enough to overlap
conversations with the scenes they describe, so that there's plenty of visual storytelling to
accompany the talking. The dialogue is witty, but it doesn't have the punchline rhythms of
Woody Allen's scripts or Nora Ephron's, and it doesn't go for the caustic zingers that would
become the trademark of
Sex and the City. We're in Miami, not New York or L.A., and our
protagonist is someone who, despite everything she's seen, hasn't yet surrendered to cynicism.
She may have lowered her expectations, but she hasn't given up hope. In musical terms, a
rhapsody denotes a composition that's free-form and open to improvisation. In common parlance,
it suggests an emotional state of hope and enthusiasm, which are the qualities that Gwyn keeps
trying to find in herself -- and if not in herself, then in that permanently upbeat young Cuban,
Antonio, who seems to have done so much good for her mother and grandmother.
Miami Rhapsody Blu-ray, Video Quality
Miami Rhapsody is one of the catalogue titles from the Disney collection (in this case, the Buena
Vista Pictures label) being released on a barebones Blu-ray by Mill Creek Entertainment. The
source material used for the 1080p, AVC-encoded transfer shows more white specks and dirt
than I suspect would be allowed by a major studio on its own product from 1995, but when you
subcontract to a small outfit and let them charge as little as $5 a Blu-ray, you can't expect them
to put much effort into cleaning up the interpositive (or print or whatever they used). Fortunately,
the damage is not so extensive as to be a major distraction. Minor gate weave is observable
during the credits but is otherwise not an issue.
The Blu-ray's image shows substantial detail, which can be readily seen in such elements as the
lacy wedding outfits at Leslie and Jeff's outdoor wedding and the elaborate reception afterward.
The blacks aren't as deep as one might expect in nighttime scenes, although this may be a function
of the original photography. Cinematographer Jack Wallner has worked primarily in television,
and deep blacks were not considered desirable in a TV image in the mid-Nineties. (Indeed, one
rarely sees them today.) Consistent with the locale, the color pallette tends toward the pastel
(though, thankfully, not the fluorescent version one finds in
Dexter). It's a naturalistic color
scheme befitting the characters' real-world dilemmas (well, maybe not Kevin Pollak's Jordan;
how many people have business partners married to someone who looks like Naomi Campbell?).
There is no obvious evidence of DNR or other digital tampering, but there
is noticeable video
noise, especially in darker scenes. This may appear at first glance to be film grain, but I studied it
closely, and it doesn't have a film-like grain structure. It's transfer-induced noise. Since it's not
especially intrusive, I'd prefer it be left there rather than have it taken off by a heavy hand that overdid
the noise reduction. But it should serve as a reminder that DNR, judiciously used, has an
appropriate place in the telecine bay.
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