"There's a story about the Greek gods. They were bored, so they invented human beings. But they were still bored, so they invented love. Then they weren't bored any longer. So, they decided to try love for themselves. And finally, they invented laughter, so they could stand it."
So begins director Robert Benton's Feast of Love, a funny, heart-wrenching film about love and all the happiness and pain that comes with it.
The movie explores a series of love stories, all connected by Prof. Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman). Stevenson is on leave from his university because of a personal tragedy. He serves as a narrator as we are introduced, through his eyes, to other characters falling in and out of love.
Bradley (Greg Kinnear) is hilariously naïve when it comes to relationships -- he has such a great desire to be loved that he is utterly blind to the fact that it is not reciprocated. In the beginning of the film, his wife (Selma Blair) leaves him for another woman. (My one major critique of the film is that this woman was a stereotype-conforming softball player.) He quickly falls for Diana (Radha Mitchell), a beautiful but devilish real estate agent who never really loves him.
The film equally explores blind, passionate, unfiltered love. The minute Chloe (Alexa Davalos) walks into the coffee shop in which Oscar (Toby Hemingway) works, the pair know they are "destined" for one another. Unlike Bradley and his cheating love interests, Chloe and Oscar love each other purely, and it is not their own natures that try to tear them apart, but the world.
Simply put, the acting is superb. Benton assembled a cast of relatively obscure actors (with the obvious exceptions of Freeman, Blair and Kinnear) who successfully disappear into their roles. It does not hurt that Freeman, who is astutely aware of the all the relationships that are forming and crumbling around him, leads them all.
Freeman has established himself as the go-to Hollywood narrator, and for good reason. His role in Feast of Love is dangerously close to that of the "magical negro," the minority stock character who guides the (usually white) protagonist through hardship, but he brings such humanity and honesty to the role that the audience cannot help but to love him more than any other character.
Though this genre of quilt-like love stories is becoming a bit too common, Feast of Love feels much more mature, and with that, much more harsh than most. This is not a film that glosses over love and gives the audience the bubble-gum, merry-go-round happy ending we have come to expect from Hollywood. Instead, it leaves us with a bit of doubt. The message is not that you shouldn't fall in love, or even that you shouldn't fall in love quickly. The message is not to fall blindly.
For anyone lucky enough to be in love, it will test you -- the film is riddled with characters doubting, defining and, ultimately, finding love. It celebrates it. It is scared by it. To the audience, the movie seems to be in love with love, but wary of its own infatuation.
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