Esther Kahn
Arnaud Desplechin's psychological period film stars Summer Phoenix as Esther, a young woman whose cramped and compromised youth has left her cold and distant, unable to express emotion. When she attends a popular theater production, however, Esther is thunderstruck by the deep feelings the performance stirs within her. She immediately sets out to become an actress and learns some valuable (albeit hard) life lessons along the way to success.
Member Reviews
Mediocre - legalwright
Summer Phoenix stars as Esther Kahn, a young Jewish woman living in London, England at the turn of the twentieth century. The first hour portrays her humble upbringing and her ambivalence to her family. Esther is detached from the connections others feel and this propells her to a career in theatre. Why this is so is not really clear nothwithstanding the generous use of a voice over narrative to help us understand Esther's interior world.
Things get a bit more interesting in the second half as Esther takes acting lessons from her colleague and friend, Nathan (Ian Holm). The philosophy and art of acting are explored in the sequences between them, which are easily the best scenes in the film
Unfortunately, Esther rise in the theatre and her concomitant engagement in the world are so fundamentally understated that the viewer never really comes to sympathize or even to like the heroine. At over 2 1/2 hours long, it requires a great deal of patience for very limited returns. An interesting premise that, in the end, turned out to be not very convincing.
Member Reviews
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Mediocre - legalwright
Summer Phoenix stars as Esther Kahn, a young Jewish woman living in London, England at the turn of the twentieth century. The first hour portrays her humble upbringing and her ambivalence to her family. Esther is detached from the connections others feel and ...