The ‘mysterious doppelganger’ trope is fairly well worn in cinema, appearing as recently as this year’s The Double, and last year’s Enemy. Unfortunately The Face of Love doesn’t really bring any new ideas to the screen with its tale of a still-grieving widow who encounters her late husband’s double. It’s a slightly soporific, shapeless drama that does contain some fine performances from the reliable Annette Bening and Ed Harris.
As entertaining as it is to watch actors as capable as this share scenes, they’re let down by a lack of depth in the material. The film tries for big emotional payoffs, but a drab veneer hangs over the whole thing and keeps the mood subdued. In a weird bit of casting, Robin Williams plays Bening’s neighbour, a small role that never leads anywhere, much like the story.
At times the film seems to be veering into De Palma thriller territory, riffing as it is on Hitchcock’s Vertigo. But in the end it’s content to be a mildly compelling melodrama, big on emoting and light on thrills. Only at the finish do we get something genuinely thought provoking, and even then it’s simultaneously overwrought and mundane.
It’s not an unpleasant watch, but for a film about stuff like love and death, The Face of Love is strangely bloodless, and never quite engaging as it should be.
‘The Face of Love’ Movie Times
