The Longest Week (2014)

Directed by: Peter Glanz
Country: USA

Movie Review: Using a relaxing flow, cordial narrative, and a cool score that includes piano jazz, swinging reeds, and violins playing Bach, “The Longest Week” is a friendly comedy that borrows the mood of Woody Allen’s stories and throws some personal touch in the way it is approached by debutant director Peter Glanz. The main character of this comedy-drama is the wealthy skirt-chaser Conrad Valmont (Jason Bateman) whose parents abandoned him since he was a kid to travel around the world, leaving him the luxurious Manhattan Hotel. Certain day he was told that his divorcing parents have disinherited him. Conrad astutely hides this detail from his best friend, Dylan Tate (Billy Crudrup), an artist who shows interest in his friend Beatrice (Olivia Wilde), an editorial model who already had caught Conrad’s eye. It seems that not even his analyst can do anything to avoid love and impoverishment, but a natural competition between the two friends will spike the film. I was able to follow the well-composed images with interest and the light humor always seemed unforced and with a perfect timing. The surprising conclusion of this tale also deserves some points, making “The Longest Week” a twisted rom-com that comes packed with graciousness and a good disposition when addresses the differences between sympathy and love, and being hopelessly romantic and romantically hopeless. Even considering its presumptuous airs ‘a lá Française’ and the too much obvious influences already mentioned before, “The Longest Week” still has something charming to deliver.