HATESHIP LOVESHIP (2013)

Genre: Drama
Director: Liza Johnson
Cast: Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce, Hailee Steinfeld, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sami Gayle, Christine Lahti, Nick Nolte
RunTime: 1 hr 44 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes and Drug Use)
Released By: GV
Official Website: http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/hateship-loveship

Opening Day: 24 July 2014

Synopsis: Johanna Parry, a quiet caregiver, starts a new job working for an elderly Mr. McCauley and his teenage granddaughter Sabitha. A cruel trick by Sabitha lands Johanna in an awkward one-way relationship with Ken, Sabitha's estranged father but her newfound ambition and desire gives her courage to transform her awkward doom into real contentment..

Movie Review:

Kristen Wiig isn’t quite yet known for her dramatic abilities as an actress, but we’re sure that will change after ‘Hateship Loveship’. Adapted by Liza Johnson from the Alice Munro short story “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.”, it sees the ‘Saturday Night Live’ comedian play a dowdy housekeeper named Johanna who finds herself the target of a cruel prank by two teenagers who lead her to believe that a man she gradually develops affections for is head over heels with her.

Yes, at the core of Johnson’s story is an individual looking to find some kind of love in her life, but this isn’t that kind of tale which makes that yearning into some kind of melodrama or fairytale romance. Rather, Johnson finds a quiet repressed protagonist in Johanna the way you would expect to find such an individual in real-life, and Wiig plays the role with elegant understatement. There are no grand gestures or overt proclamations; instead, through Wiig’s nicely tuned performance, she conveys the awkward and socially painful journey which her character undergoes during the course of the film.

Right from the start, change is part of the nature of Johanna’s character. The elderly woman she has been aide to for most of her life has just passed, and the single caregiver moves to a new town and starts a new job keeping house for a rich elderly man named Bill (Nick Nolte) and his teenage granddaughter Sabitha (Hailee Steinfield) - “a new everything” as she describes it. On her first day at work, Johanna also meets Sabitha’s father, Ken (Guy Pearce), who’s estranged from the family because Bill holds him responsible for causing the death of Sabitha’s mother in an auto accident.

If it isn’t yet apparent, Ken is the person whom Sabitha and her friend Edith (Sami Gayle) impersonates, following a single real exchange between Johanna and Ken initiated by the latter who politely thanks the former for taking care of Sabitha. And so Sabitha and Edith begin a cruel trick of correspondence, pretending to be Ken over email, proclaiming his love for her and in the process making her fall for him. Johnson approaches Johanna’s transformation as if a character study, portraying with intimate detail how her belief of Ken’s love changes her as a woman from makeup to dress-up.

Wiig’s restrained acting means that she never calls out for empathy nor sympathy, not even when Johanna hops onto a bus to Chicago and finds the truth crashing down on her together with her dream of starting a new life with Ken. It isn’t just the fact that he isn’t been writing those letters; it’s also the state of Ken’s life that proves depressing - besides being hooked on drugs, he also has an on-off girlfriend in Jennifer Jason Leigh’s fellow junkie Chloe. Like she does with a house, Johanna proceeds to quietly take charge of things, and it is gratifying to see how she slowly picks up the pieces to make the best out of a horrible situation.

The same however cannot be said of two subplots thrown in with little reason except to pad out the runtime - the first of Bill’s budding romance with a bank teller (Christine Lahti), and the second of Sabitha and Edith’s friction after the latter gets jealous of Sabitha’s family wealth; indeed, neither gain much traction, leaving of course the heavylifting to Johanna to carry the narrative weight of the movie on her shoulders. Thankfully, Johnson makes her a fully formed character, in no small measure due to Wiig’s stellar turn that lets us feel her loneliness, steeliness and subsequent happiness.

Yes, this is Wiig’s show, and as good a calling card as any for Hollywood to give her a shot at the dramatic opportunities she has not gotten much of thus far. Johnson’s handling of the material is delicate and sensitive, her pacing deliberate but assured, though her writing could do with some trimming, especially with regard to finding closure for the other supporting characters. ‘Hateship Loveship’ is a charming little film, and if it seems we’ve neglected to talk about Guy Pearce and Nick Nolte at all, well let’s in closing say that they are - as always - uniformly excellent, but this ship belongs unequivocally to Wiig. 

Movie Rating:

(A quietly absorbing character study of finding love and making the best out of one’s circumstances, bolstered by an elegantly understated performance by Kristen Wiig)

Review by Gabriel Chong