Labor Day (2013)

Directed by: Jason Reitman
Country: USA

Movie Review: “Labor Day” was too miserable to make me believe it came out from the hands of Jason Reitman, who holds in his career such respectable films, as are the cases of “Thank You for Smoking”, “Juno”, “Up in the Air”, and “Young Adult”. The film was based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Maynard who, for the second time, sees her literary work adapted for the screen, after Gus Van Sant’s “To Die For” in 1995. Adele Wheeler (Kate Winslet) is a depressive mother who lives alone with her adolescent son Henry (Gattlin Griffith). This young boy tries everything to please her and get her out of an unnatural apathy. One day, while shopping, they are approached by a wounded stranger named Frank (Josh Brolin), who first asks for a ride but immediately invites himself into their house. The man is a fugitive, formerly convicted to 18 years in prison for murder. The story starts to take ridiculous proportions since an early stage, when Frank ties Adele through slow and sensual movements while a tense music floats in the air. After the initial suspicion, acceptance arrives and the kind tones reveal they had become a family. Frank even shows he’s a skillful man in the kitchen for Adele’s satisfaction, while Henry struggles with the common problems of adolescence. Providing that the romance was too cheesy and the action/thriller too insufficient, what attracted me more in “Labor Day” was the amazing peach pie baked by the family! However, and since everyone deserves another chance, I’ll keep waiting for that stroke of genius that Reitman once accustomed us.