Searching Inward

 

LOOKING FOR ERIC (2009) (B) - From Ken Loach ("I, Daniel Blake," "Kes," "The Angels' Share") comes this sweet little tale of a middle-aged mailman in Manchester, England, having a crisis and turning to a poster-come-to-life version of soccer star Eric Cantona to find his inner champion. Steve Evets plays Eric Bishop, struggling to raise a couple of young-adult stepsons while still pining for his true love, the woman he abandoned after she gave birth to their daughter decades ago.

Cantona, who finished his career with Manchester United, plays himself here, seen only to Eric, in particular during times of doubt. Cantona (who transitioned to acting and does a workmanlike job here) is a sort of philosophic therapist and life coach. He gives Eric the gumption to try to reconnect with that ex, Lily (Stephanie Bishop), when they are brought together by their daughter's need for a baby-sitter for six weeks now that the daughter, Sam (Lucy-Jo Hudson), is finishing up her studies. 

But Eric is distracted by the rowdy two stepsons and their friends. One son gets caught up with a local hoodlum and is harboring a gun in the house under the floorboards. Eric's worlds will collide as he tries to make things up to Lily and perhaps even win her back. Can the great Cantona lead him to glory?

It all sounds a bit soapy, but Loach keeps everything grounded, and the script by Paul Laverty, Loach's longtime collaborator, is smart and unpredictable. Eric and his mates banter quite expertly, either at the post office or at the pub while watching their beloved local football squad. One-liners mix with heartfelt conversations. (When Cantona asks Eric if he was close with his father, Eric says, "Well, he once sat on me by mistake.") The final reel -- in which the drama over the weapon is resolved with a shock of violence -- loses the thread a bit and feels unearned, but this one comes through in the end.

WHERE THE TRUTH LIES (2005) (B-minus) - Atom Egoyan ("The Sweet Hereafter," "Exotica") has fun with this convoluted and cheap-looking slow burn about a Martin-and-Lewis type of duo whose partnership ended in the late '50s after a young woman was found dead in their hotel suite bathtub. Colin Firth (as the Dean Martin figure) and Kevin Bacon (channeling Jerry Lewis) are pale imitations of the real deal, but Egoyan wisely focuses on the "present day," 1972, a time when ambitious reporter Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman) tracks down the two men, who are now slipping into their respective maudlin middle years. 

Firth and Bacon are much more compelling when they are older and moody than when they are trying to convey the magic that was the '50s slapstick of Martin and Lewis. Egoyan's set-up is playful: The key event is a telethon circa 1957 and hosted by the men. (Instead of Lewis going solo with muscular dystrophy, this version has both men fronting for polio.)  Things get crazy one night back in the suite with a young willing hotel employee, and somehow, a few days later, her body turns up.

The main problem with the film is that the narrative is confusing. The story not only jumps back and forth in time, but it also toggles between New Jersey and Miami. And the mob is involved, of course. In the end, the story (Egoyan adapted a novel written by Rupert Holmes, the guy who wrote "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)") barely maintains plausibility, but as a diverting exercise in period revisionist history, it'll do.