
DATE: Thursday, September 11, 1997          TAG: 9709100062

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Movie Review 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   83 lines

ACTING IN ``LOVELY'' WELL WORTH THE ADMISSION THREE STARS SHINE IN UNPREDICTABLE ROMANTIC COMEDY.

JUST ABOUT everything about ``She's So Lovely'' is unconventional, particularly a quirky, sharp-edged performance by Sean Penn that rivets the attention.

This film is being marketed as a ``romantic comedy'' in which an attractive woman has to choose between two attractive suitors. In reality, it is much darker - a boozy poem about drunken lowlifes consumed with obsessive behavior. There is nothing overtly attractive about any of the three characters at the center of things.

At the outset, the peculiarly intense love between Eddie and Maureen is established. He is a gun-totin' punk who frequents bars. She is the same, minus the gun. She stumbles and falls, often, on rain-soaked streets. She's pregnant with his child, but he disappears for days at a time. Yet, they clearly are super-hot for each other. When a lard-bag neighbor rapes her, she's afraid to tell Eddie, for fear of what he'll do. Her fear is well-grounded. He goes berserk and ends up in a mental institution for 10 years.

Flash forward. She's sobered up and living in a large suburban house, complete with swimming pool. She's married to Joey, a hard-nosed construction executive who has rescued her from the gutter but has a bit of the gutter in himself. He drinks beer with Eddie's 9-year-old daughter, whom he is raising. When Eddie is released from the mental ward, a classic triangle situation is set up. Will she go for passion or reason? Or neither?

Nick Cassavetes imitates the style of his late father, John Cassavetes, in using close-ups and ping-pong editing during the give-and-take conversations. The script was written by the elder Cassavetes a year before his death in 1989. It is a hymn to the independent-minded, off-centered films that the elder Cassavetes pioneered into the mainstream. The present production, graced with three name stars, is a testament that independent films are becoming more and more commercial entries, primarily because big-studio Hollywood is giving us only mindless junk.

Penn, as Eddie, seems on the verge of exploding at any second. He won the Cannes Film Festival's ``best actor'' honor for this role, and it shouts Oscar nomination, too. Mental patients are always showy roles, but Penn turns Eddie into a particularly vulnerable, pitiable character.

His wife, Robin Wright Penn, cements her position as a fine actress who is just waiting for an even-greater showcase than this. She was Forrest Gump's wandering girlfriend and she is no less a questionable feminine force here. Maureen, after all, is the one who turns in Eddie and never writes or visits him during the 10 years he's in the institution. This is a wonderfully flawed and morally ambiguous character. Yet it is thoroughly believable that both men are obsessed with her. She should emerge as one of our finest screen actors. She has the grit.

Travolta has the least showy role, but he convincingly essays a no-nonsense guy who wants his wife at home - period. Some of his deadpan ``Pulp Fiction'' brand of comic understatement is evident here.

Harry Dean Stanton, looking like an aged Bogart as the barfly pal, has the kind of wrinkled face that suggests rough living. We'd like an entire, separate movie to be made about his character. Gena Rowlands, mother of Nick and wife of the late John Cassavetes, has a bit part as a social counselor.

``She's So Lovely'' is definitely not for everyone. It is, however, for everyone who wants a recess from the summer's technically awesome but predictable fare. The acting, alone, is well worth the price of admission.

Audiences should not be reluctant to laugh. There may be potential tragedy here, but it's so eccentric and so unpredictable that we are encouraged, just as in real life, to add a chuckle to get us through it. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

JOYCE RUDOLPH

Robin Wright Penn with real-life husband, Sean Penn, in a scene from

Nick Cassavetes' ``She's So Lovely.'' The independent film also

stars John Travolta.

Graphic

MOVIE REVIEW

``She's So Lovely''

Cast: Sean Penn, Robin Wright Penn, John Travolta, Harry Dean

Stanton, Gena Rowlands

Director: Nick Cassavetes

Screenplay: John Cassavetes

MPAA rating: R (strong language, some violence)