User reviews

This obscure drama film about a former talented swimmer who tries to piece her life together after a troubled relationship is so aloof and uncommunicative that you feel like you've snuck into a party you weren't invited to. Writer/director Erin Dignam arguably aims for authenticity and depth by being offish, and it works in the sense that Robin Wright Penn's lead character comes off as remarkably true, even if she still isn't particularly interesting. William Hurt plays her lawyer in an even more introspective manner than we usually see him. His character seems absentminded, almost like a distraction, until we ultimately get a little glimpse into his own demons, which seem to gravitate him towards Wright Penn. It's all a somewhat slight and detached character study, but at least it's an actual study. The women are in focus here, which may be some sort of accomplishment in itself, and the film tries to discuss issues which it doesn't claim to have a definitive answer to beforehand. For that Dignam and her cast deserve credit, even if the end product is artistically lacking and never quite comes alive. Sean Penn produced and appears in an allegorical cameo.

When an abusive man's girlfriend ends up in a wheelchair and another one jumps in front of a car to end her misery, attorney William Hurt decides to bring him to trial. Emotionally-scarred Robin Wright is called to testify at a court hearing against her former lover.

Sounds like the beginning of a good courtroom drama, and with a cast that also includes Sean Penn, Joanna Cassidy and Amy Madigan, how can you go wrong?

A lot, actually. What we have here is a strong contender for the title of Most Boring Film of the Decade. I honestly can't recall seeing a duller, slower, more sophorific piece of filmmaking.

Does director/writer Erin Dignam think real people talk and act like these characters? I'm all for psychological dramas and introspective stories but they have to be somewhat interesting. Even depressing stories can be compelling, but compared to this, Ingmar Bergman's films look like Die Hard meets Rambo. This film is so sleep-inducing, it could be used by dentists as an anesthetic.

Don't take my word, see it and judge for yourself. But make sure you have plenty of coffee available, or you may never reach the end with your eyes open.

I saw this film while voting for the Independent Spirit Awards and I must say it had many of my favorite performers. William Hurt, Amy Madigan, Sean Penn (whose company helped make the movie), Joanna Cassidy, Paul Dooley and Jennifer Rubin is like a dream cast to me. I couldn't wait for them to be put to good use. Sadly, they were given almost nothing interesting to do. It has a good setup, it is about the damage that happens in abusive relationships, specifically what people are willing to endure in order to feel loved. The project was not structured or developed very well, however. I think the script needed a few more drafts because the situations needed more urgency or more weight. Most good independent films take you on an emotional or spiritual journey and this film just did not do that.

The main character is clearly groomed by the b/f from an early age ( 16) . During her questioning by the lawyer she refers to the inculcated guilt experienced during her childhood, yet her sisters appeared to be well adjusted adults. Meeting a coercive controller at such an early age Hedda becomes besotted and we understand wants acceptance and willing to accept punishment and blame for the actions of the man she links up with. He captures her... is an understatement as happens in manipulative coercive relations. Where the perpetrator has total control and his victim is used abused and convinced she is responsible for his violence and rages, A dark series of imponderable conversations throughout this movie between Hedda and her lawyer and finally the man responsible , who appears to have made a career out of psychologically controlling women.

We learn very little about him or his other victims .. just a pointless movie that could have unearthed a great deal more about how masculine coercive control blights women's lives and leaves them emotionally scared with life long PTSD akin to a soldier who has endured grievous combat.

This movie has the most ridiculous dialogue. It was like walking into the middle of a conversation about something you never heard of and people you don't know. And that never changed.

This must be the singular most boring movie that I've ever seen. I can't remember a movie being so slow to reach a punchline that simply never excists. The whole movie should simply never have been made.

I saw this movie at the Seattle Film Festival before it was released...if it ever was released. It has got to be one of the best movies I've ever seen, but it's a terrible shame that it didn't ever find its audience. Daring story of a woman who refuses to cooperate with a lawyer who is prosecuting her blatantly manipulative and very dangerous ex-boyfriend. The character played by Robyn Wright Penn is of a type rarely seen, or at least rarely examined, on screen. Rarely have I been so completely taken in emotionally by a film. Amazing.

There are things you never can tell why you like them. Why you let this CD hypnotize you,make you listen to it, why you're taken away with that movie. You can't describe it, can't put it into words. It's the air, the atmosphere, the charm of it that takes over you. I felt that in "Loved". And i loved this movie.

And I'd like to thank Robin Wright Penn for acting so heavenly she made me forget to breathe and watch Loved like something that i experience in flesh-with my senses,with my mind,with my heart. And - William Hurt - he's got a flair, he's so unbelievably talented-he never lets you down.

This film came to me accidentally, but maybe that's the only way something with this much emotional depth can. It's not slow and boring - it breathes. And it allows one to breathe. The pace is appropriate and won't leave one fidgeting like the endless underwater blue fairy scene in A.I., or Ed Harris's pounding of his ex-wife's chest for the hundredth time in The Abyss' ridiculous resuscitation scene. It has an enchanting rhythm, like the Accidental Tourist - it reminded me about William Hurt's under-appreciated (he rarely immediately pops to mind when thinking of our greatest actors), yet luminous interior talent . If you're a sensitive person who likes to be absorbed and also participate intellectually in a movie, check it out.

If "Titanic" is what moves you, then skip "Loved." If you prefer slow-paced, thoughtful drama without special effects, noise or guns, where you have to put a lot of pieces together yourself, this is your movie. I don't believe that a movie is to be seen, half-digested and compartmentalized after one viewing, certainly not if it has any of the elements of subtle poignancy that this movie has. And because they are so good, I want more from writer-director, Erin Dignam and the lead actors, William Hurt and Robin Wright. I like looking at William Hurt and at Robin Wright even when they say nothing, when they struggle to find the right words. They can take all the time in the world, they are so impressive in their thoughtful solitude. Speak of a mismatched pair: a tall, dowdy lawyer of scholarly mien and a beautiful waif of athletic prowess. In this movie there is a chance to see if opposites attract after all. William Hurt and Robin Wright deliver flawless acting. He is a California prosecutor taking on a battered woman case, and Wright is the more than willing victim, the reluctant witness that has to be subpoenaed to testify. Imagine a sunny, naive, diffident, young California woman moving to New York City to get away from a first teen-age entanglement that leaves her damaged physically and emotionally. That's Wright character, Hedda. A one-time Olympic swimming contender, she returns to California for the prosecution of her former abusive boy-friend, who is wont to repeat his aggressive behaviour with others. Hurt is recruited to prosecute this difficult case, to end, or at least, to put a dent in this man's damage. If there are flaws in the film, they lie in no information being given about Wright's life in New York, and what it is that has hurt the prosecutor's past life and career. He seems to have lost his way but we don't know why. There is only so much reading between the lines one can do though it could be me that doesn't read well. Wright's character may be too naive to be believable, but on the other hand, it is called the battered spouse "syndrome." In the loose ends and in the space between thelines lie the beauty of this movie. Something unsaid may be happening between the prosecutor (Hurt) and his witness (Wright). Two lovable, damaged people may or may not be inching, reaching out to each other. Two near-fully realized characters are presented to us to make of them what we will because the writer-director won't give the store away. I prefer it that way. "Loved" is a compelling theatre piece, perhaps in the vein of an "Oleanna." In "Loved" the dark courtoom scenes are set within those of a bright, sunshiny Santa Monica and Redondo Beach. You may feel like walking around Santa Monica after when the movie ends. I do. Adventure seekers, romance novel readers and fans of "Godfather 15; 16; 17," ad nauseum, need not apply.

I was absolutely fascinated by the story and its characters, mainly Hedda, of course. It was quite a challenge, both intellectually and emotionally, to step in this odd version of love and romantic connection and see the way the characters relate to love and their strange definition and understanding of emotional bonding, which takes extreme, violent turns. What I find striking is that there are many who might identify themselves with Hedda's ex-boyfriend in terms of all that longing for flawless complementing and wholeness with the loved one, however, it is the specific expression of this feeling, as well as a certain healthy state of passivity, that makes the difference and separates people on the safe side of the edge from those on the other side, who fall, hurt and get hurt because they no longer possess an objective sense of what is tangible. When Hedda says: "The table was no longer a table", we may as well understand that her skin was no longer skin, a matter of skin tissues, when his ex was battering her, it may as well have been paper or cotton, and that the pain she was feeling in the process was not actually pain, but equaled love and reaching out for it. So, the limits between concepts like love, pain, sharing and intimacy, and their definitions, as well as the usual adjectives/ stereotypes attached to them get just as fuzzy and confused as the characters. The characters are placed on the scene and left on their own to grow throughout the story and to reveal themselves progressively, quite similar to a canvas painting process. The movie has a beautifully slow, bluesy rhythm, with moving flash-backs and a heart-breaking climax when Hedda makes her final confession regarding her personal feeling of privilege in the context of her ex-lover's violence. Robin Wright Penn makes a terrific job of portraying Hedda as a graceful, pretty fragile and floaty presence of a kind, tender nature, a woman who would have been just a regular person if it hadn't been for her past relationship and the emotional and psychological entanglements derived from it. Her ex is not the bad guy of the story, but a tragic soul who simply doesn't know where to stop and can't conceive drawing lines between the separate selves and territories when loving someone deeply.

A previous commentist accurately summarized the plot as follows: When an abusive man's girlfriend ends up in a wheelchair and another one jumps in front of a car to end her misery, attorney William Hurt decides to bring him to trial. Emotionally-scarred Robin Wright is called to testify at a court hearing against her former lover.

However, the rest of his comments indicate that it's not just adolescent Americans who want movie stories neatly finished by the end of the movie. I found this film to be a thoughtful examination of several aspects of love and dependency. It provides no easy answers to the questions posed and actually requires the viewer to pay attention and THINK. Performances are uniformly excellent, especially Robin Penn Wright's in the principal role.

This film affected me on a deep visceral level. I saw this movie at the Seattle International Film Festival and would love to see it again. Robin Wright's performance captured the strength of openness and vulnerability. Hedda's question to William Hurt's character, "Do you love me enough yet?" was quite haunting. And to her mother, when she asked why Hedda hadn't told her about her pain (if I remember correctly), "because you aren't strong enough," poignantly portrays a soul that has been emotionally used and abused from a young age and learned to take on others' emotional needs at her own expense - especially a woman who has true empathy.

It has been a while since I have seen this film (saw the premier in Toronto), but I really enjoyed it and was very impressed with the unique take on abusive and destructive relationships that it explored. I strongly reccomend it and if anything might dissappoint the general viewer, it is that it takes time to understand the characters and does not judge them or box them into good or bad.

Geo-

It's interesting how depending on the maturity of each viewer, there are so positive and so negative comments at the time. This proves one more time how differently we perceive things. I saw this movie, maybe 3-4 years ago. I must admit, I did not experience any feeling of excitement while watching it, nevertheless it did catch my attention. When it ended the only idea that I was left with was that love is like a drug... if you become addicted ... it can ruin you. Robin's character response to "if you were to go back in time what would you do?" , "I would do everything just the same"... was tattooed to my brain. This story needed to be told and it couldn't have been better told. This is my opinion.

'Loved' is not edge of the seat stuff. It is a grown-up film which examines the nature of love and infatuation. The script is beautifully crafted and provides insight into the machinations of it's individual characters. Robin Wright-Penn and William Hurt undergo a professional relationship which seems to promise something more. The question raised is about commitment and whether that commitment necessitates losing something in oneself. The language of the film is as much in the incidental actions and gestures as in the dialogue. William Hurt stands by the pool, fully clothed, he offers his hand to help R W-P out, she beckons him in. If that is too subtle for you, steer well clear. But, if nothing else, do catch the first five minutes for the brilliant Sean Penn cameo.

The first love is the toughest. You'll never forget, sets the standards for all of the relations in the future. Some first love never finish, and they 're carried out throughout life like little secrets that we hide from everybody. That's what 'Loved' is about. I don't think our friend from Milan has ever had a direct experience in the matter.

Robin Wright plays the girl who finally seems in peace of mind apart from when it comes to her very first boyfriend. He's still around, victim of love, victim of himself.

This well thought court-house love drama is sometimes too etherious, like teen age love. You most relate to appreciate: I did, and I even tried to buy the film for an ancillary but the distributor would't return calls. I recommend it.

I found this an easy watch. The time passed quickly as it kept me interested from start to finish.

William Hurt and Robin Wright were spot on and the story unfolded perfectly. Enough information was given for a viewer to understand the underlying emotions.

I enjoy films that allow you to piece together what has happened, is happening and may happen. Excellent.

I feel that this movie will not appeal to everyone, but I think it does very well at tapping into the emotions of women who have been abused. The irrational thoughts that one uses to try to rationalize the abuse they suffer at the hands of someone they want to believe loves them. Robin Wright Penn is excellent!