THE LONG DAY CLOSES (1992) (B-minus) - This is another early dream-like reverie from Terence Davies, his early-'90s follow up to his landmark film "Distant Voices, Still Lives." This comes off as prettier, glossier, and more upbeat, but it's too precious by half.
Davies goes back to Liverpool in the postwar era to again wallow in his childhood with his widowed mother. Like the recent "Belfast," Davies' scrub-cheeked avatar is a sensitive lad who loves movies. (How else would he grow up to become an artsy filmmaker?) But is he ever a dour schoolboy.
Like Davies' 1988 breakthrough, the soundtrack is full of music, much of it sung amiably by the characters. At one point, the young lad, who is often in the presence of shirtless boys and young men, swings from a metal bar to the saccharine strains of Debbie Reynolds' "Tammy," which proceeds to play out, painfully, in its complete three-minute run. Dialogue from classic movies is also borrowed generously, often creating a distraction. Religion casts a pall over the entire proceedings. It's all incredibly gorgeous but laden with too many indulgences, like an interminable close-up of a rug, which provided incentives for me to doze off.
Davies can be a challenging cup of tea. It's been decades since we were awed by "Distant Voices." His new film, "Benediction," just doesn't look interesting enough to devote two hours to. His high-water mark since the turn of the millennium has been "The Deep Blue Sea," another period piece but one about a woman trapped in a loveless marriage. He synced well with Cynthia Nixon for the Emily Dickenson biopic "A Quiet Passion" in 2017. And he went the documentary route for the deeply nostalgic valentine to Liverpool, with mixed results, in "Of Time and the City." But he stumbled badly with "Sunset Song," a Scottish slog that we didn't make it through in 2016. Those latter two and this one just aren't necessary.
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