A football-shaped Valentine

A surefire ingredient of cinematic success: put a dance sequence in your movie. People love dance sequences. It’s one of the reasons people adored Pulp Fiction or cheered at Little Miss Sunshine or even remember Scent of a Woman at all.

Another thing people love is a good competition at the end of a movie, and Oscar-nominated David O. Russell scores a coup in his latest, Silver Linings Playbook, by sneaking in not just a final football game but a dance contest to boot. He also somehow works in bipolar disorder and sex addiction and gambling and grief. And it all works, thanks in no small part to the chemistry between Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, two characters with varying degrees of screwed-up brain chemistry.

Wait a minute, you say: David O. Russell? The guy who made Three Kings and The Fighter and Spanking the Monkey? Doing a romance? Yep. Hollywood is full of surprises.
Russell and fellow indie breakout director Alexander Payne have both charted, in their work, a view of America that is slightly off-center, shall we say. Satire is their natural domain. Payne brought us Election and Sideways and The Descendants. Russell similarly spotlights American quirks in movies like Flirting with Disaster and I Heart Huckabees.

But Silver Linings Playbook, based on a novel by Matthew Quick, plays closer to the heart than Russell’s previous offerings. Either that, or it simply plays closer to the Hollywood playbook of romantic comedy than anything else he’s done. Yet it’s highly enjoyable, and still highly quirky.

Cooper plays Pat, a Philadelphian released from a state mental facility after eight months into the care of his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver). Dad is a bookmaker who requires various talismans in his presence while watching Sunday football games; he feels it helps him win bets. Pat is one of those talismans, but his raging bipolar disorder leaves him restless and crazy at times — such as waking up his parents at 4 a.m. to complain about the ending of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, or wearing plastic Hefty bags over his torso while running.

It is during one of his neighborhood runs that he meets Tiffany (Lawrence, in fetching form), a young widow who’s been prescribed various antidepressants after her husband, a cop, died and she began managing her grief by sleeping with a large male (and female) population. Pat is attracted yet perplexed by Tiffany, and the two test out each other’s craziness for a while.

Yet Pat is still married to Nikki, a teacher who had an affair with a fellow teacher, and in his fixated, somewhat deluded state, he thinks he can get her back by adopting a rosier outlook on life — what he calls “silver lining” thinking. Unfortunately, Nikki’s ordered a restraining order on Pat, so he enlists Tiffany to help get a letter to his estranged wife.

Silver Linings Playbook is an odd concoction. On paper, how could this work? A football-obsessed Philadelphia family, a dance-obsessed former sex addict, an occasionally violent young man who doesn’t quite know what he wants in life. Yet, again, it’s the chemistry that clicks, not just between the leads, but even in the minor character roles (Chris Tucker, Dash Mihok, Paul Herman) lurking at the edges of the script.

And here we see the full bloom of Lawrence as a star who can write whatever ticket she wants. Yes, we’ve seen her holding a bow and arrow in Oscar bait Winter’s Bone; yes, we’ve seen her holding a bow and arrow as Katniss in megahit The Hunger Games; now she’s holding her own and downright desirable as a sassy, soulful-eyed woman who accepts her own sexual appetites, and lives to dance. Not to mention she can recite the scores and plays of past Philadelphia Eagles games without blinking or pausing for breath — talk about a male fantasy. (And yeah: she also looks really good in those dance tights.)

Cooper, for his part, puts in his best work yet as a guy who seems unhinged through half the movie, until he figures out the true play here: L-O-V-E. At first, it seems like the butterfly net is going to descend over his head any minute, and he’ll be carted back to lock-up. But he undergoes what they call a “transformation” in scriptwriting classes — and practicing a dance routine with Tiffany is part of his road to wellness. So it makes perfect sense when he spiffs up at the end in a crisp white shirt and dinner jacket to cut some serious rug with jaded yet still starry-eyed Tiffany.

So, yeah, this is a Valentine’s movie, pure and simple, although it hasn’t hit local screens in time for what is arguably the second most important holiday for Filipinos. Even though it’s chock full of Russell’s satirical grace notes and the skittery, handheld direction that made Three Kings and The Fighter such a nerve-jangling experience, here that technique is deployed to realistically show how crazy and dangerous Pat really is. So you know what’s at stake. Lawrence, on the other hand, with her deadma stare, never convinces you she’s off-the-charts crazy; rather, she’s just canny and misunderstood. De Niro puts in an actual performance for a change, though it’s really just a variation on his dad role in the Meet the Parents movies; Weaver is winning as the concerned mom who looks the way real suburban moms actually look (Russell is always good at casting real-life types); and yes, Shea Wigham is on hand as Pat’s brother, basically playing Eli from Boardwalk Empire again.

Dust off the quirky energy and football asides of Silver Linings Playbook, and the ending resembles nothing so much as As Good As It Gets, Jack Nicholson manfully embracing his meds and recovery with a good woman like Helen Hunt by his side to coax him along. But I just rewatched As Good As It Gets again recently, and damn if I didn’t buy into it, hook, line and sinker. You’re allowed to be a sucker for romantic endings when they’re this satisfying. At least this month.