Love Liza

Love Liza is a 2002 American tragicomedic[3] drama film directed by Todd Louiso and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Jack Kehler, Wayne Duvall, Sarah Koskoff and Stephen Tobolowsky. The film is written by Gordy Hoffman, a playwright and the elder brother of Philip. Love Liza debuted at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.

Love Liza
Movie poster
Directed byTodd Louiso
Written byGordy Hoffman
Produced byRuth Charny
Chris Hanley
Corky O'Hara
Jeffrey Roda
Fernando Sulichin
StarringPhilip Seymour Hoffman
Kathy Bates
CinematographyLisa Rinzler
Edited byAnn Stein
Music byJim O'Rourke
Production
companies
Wild Bunch
StudioCanal
Starhaus Filmproduktion
Distributed bySony Pictures Classics
Release dates
  • January 14, 2002 (2002-01-14)
(Sundance)
  • December 30, 2002 (2002-12-30)
(limited)
Running time
90 minutes
CountriesFrance
Germany
United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1 million[1][2]

Plot

Wilson Joel's wife Liza has, for an inexplicable reason, died by suicide. Wilson discovers a sealed letter from his wife, which he believes to be her suicide note. In his grief-stricken state and with the added stress of finding the letter, which he cannot bring himself to open and read, he forms an addiction to inhaling gasoline fumes ("huffing"). His mother-in-law Mary Ann tries her best to help her son and deal with her own loss at the same time. She becomes increasingly anxious to know the contents of the letter, but Wilson refuses to open it.

To hide his addiction from his coworker Maura, he informs her that the petrol smell in his house is from his hobby of flying remote-controlled planes. To try to engage an ever-distant Wilson, Maura asks her brother-in-law, Denny, a radio control (RC) hobbyist, to visit Wilson. Knowing Denny will soon visit him, Wilson heads to an RC hobbyist shop to buy a plane, and learns that model planes run on Glow fuel instead of gasoline.

When Maura eventually confesses her attraction to Wilson, he runs away from her and begins a road trip to New Orleans from Indiana. He grows more disoriented as he huffs on the trip, and stumbles upon an RC competition in Slidell, Louisiana. Wilson goes swimming in the lake, disrupting the RC boat races. Denny greets him on the shore with a towel, and explains to all the upset racers that Wilson just lost his wife to suicide.

Denny drives Wilson back home. Along the way, he encourages Wilson to open Liza's letter, but he is horrified when Wilson wants to do it in front of him. Wilson's addiction grows out of control, and he loses a work opportunity when a client discovers him huffing glow fuel with neighborhood kids.

After breaking into Mary Ann's house to get pictures of Liza, Wilson finds her alone holding Liza's letter. He returns home with the letter and finally opens it. His late wife's final wish is for Wilson to find someone else to love in life, while holding onto her in his heart. After he reads the final words of the letter, "Love, Liza," Wilson strikes a match found inside the letter and burns the letter. The gas fumes in the house ignite his clothes. Wilson peels them off and throws them to the ground, only igniting more fumes on the carpet. In his underwear, he walks out of his burning house down the road in the middle of traffic.

Cast

Production

When Gordy Hoffman wrote the screenplay for Love Liza, he did not originally envision his brother Philip for the lead role. Said Gordy, "In ’96, Phil and I just happened to both go home to Rochester for Labor Day weekend...I’d just finished Love Liza, and I gave it to him to read. I wasn’t even thinking about getting it made, it was just a matter of I’d finished something."[4] Philip said of the script, "It was really, really good. I thought, It should get done, and then it was like, I’ll do it. It wasn’t like he asked me or I asked him.”[4] The film spent over four years in development as the production sought financing and the script went through re-writes.[5][4]

Love Liza was filmed in Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans in early 2001.[4] Director Todd Louiso flew out Los Angeles-based actors at his own expense to fill out the film's supporting cast.[4]

Reception

Release

Love Liza premiered in January 2002 at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival and London Film Festival.[4] At Sundance, the film was awarded the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for Gordy Hoffman.[6] The film was picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics and went into limited release on December 30, 2002, ultimately grossing $223,426 worldwide.[7][8]

Critical reception

On review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, Love Liza has an approval rating of 52% based on 87 reviews. The critics' consensus states: "Hoffman's performance is strong, but the lack of character development and story arc makes Love Liza unsatisfying."[9]

Rex Reed of The New York Observer praised Hoffman's performance, believing that it could have the same kind of impact on his career as Leaving Las Vegas had for Nicolas Cage.[10] Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote "the situations in the film are fresh and inventive and just plain odd enough to keep interest reasonably high. Still, it’s doubtful that the film would register nearly so well without Philip Seymour Hoffman in the leading role. Pudgy, pasty and squinty-eyed, Hoffman would scarcely stand out in a crowd, and yet, as he almost always has in his numerous impressive character turns, the actor here displays a live wire personality that makes him a magnetic figure even when portraying a state of thorough-going misery."[11]

However, A. O. Scott of The New York Times stated that Hoffman's "omnipresence is something of a mixed blessing", given that the protagonist is "more a state of feeling than a character".[8][12]

In 2014, Jordan Hoffman of Vanity Fair noted the way the film "tackled depression and substance abuse in a dark-as-hell comedy that takes on an additional layer of sadness [after Hoffman's death]".[13]

References
  1. "Love Liza". The Numbers. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  2. Propes, Richard. ""Love Liza" Review". The Independent Critic. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  3. Meyer, Carla (January 26, 2003). "Tale by two siblings / Hoffman brothers team up in 'Love Liza'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved February 13, 2019. Gordy says -- but in the meantime, there's "Love Liza," a tragicomedy) written by Gordy and starring his brother.
  4. Dumenco, Simon (December 2, 2002). "Family Affair". New York. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  5. "Love Liza (press kit)" (PDF). Sony Pictures Classics. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  6. "2002 Sundance Film Festival". history.sundance.org. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  7. "Love Liza". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  8. Pomerance, Murray (October 19, 2011). Shining in Shadows: Movie Stars of the 2000s. Rutgers University Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-8135-5216-3.
  9. "Love Liza". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  10. Reed, Rex (September 16, 2002). "Toronto Festival: Post-9/11 Cinema". Observer. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  11. McCarthy, Todd (January 22, 2002). "Love Liza". Variety. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  12. Scott, A. O. (December 30, 2002). "FILM REVIEW; A Prisoner of Grief Binges on a Deadly Diet of Sympathy". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
  13. Hoffman, Jordan (February 2, 2014). "Philip Seymour Hoffman's Movie Career: A Streak of Genius, Stopped Too Soon". Vanity Fair. Retrieved February 12, 2014.
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