"Good Night" by Gwyneth Paltrow's Brother

says Kirill Zuev

This is the directorial debut of 32-year-old Jack Paltrow, Gwyneth Paltrow's younger brother. Previously, he had not worked in big films, except for filming some television series. But then, as they say, he snapped it up and immediately got not only his sister to play the leading roles (which generally goes without saying, they are not strangers after all), but also Danny DeVito and Penelope Cruz, as well as the rising star of British cinema Martin Freeman. But it’s probably impossible to say that Jack Paltrow deserved such a stellar company and a fifteen-million dollar budget.

Jack Paltrow decided to make a film of no kind - mysterious, surreal and beautiful. Well, and ultimately become, for example, the new David Lynch or at least the new Michel Gondry.

The story is like this. An Englishman, a native of London, named Harry Shuler (Freeman) lives in New York. He is already quite old - thirty-four - but this is of little use. He used to have a promising rock band, but it's been broken up for seven years now, and now Harry makes a living by composing music for commercials. There is, however, a girlfriend Dora (Paltrow), but the sluggish existence of her roommate irritates her more and more. To top it all off, things are going disgustingly well for my best friend and former bandmate.

In such a dreary and unpromising period of his life, Harry suddenly begins to regularly dream about the mysterious beauty Anna (Cruz). The dreams become more and more real, and Harry begins to feel better and better. He even turns to a specialist in various kinds of fashionable esotericism (DeVito) to learn not just to see dreams, but also to control them. Just then Dora utters the sacramental “We need to take a break from each other” and flies off to Venice. And the plot quite logically approaches the moment of meeting a stranger in real life. Harry first sees her face on a poster on board the bus, and then meets Penelope Cruz's character, who turns out to be a model with the beautiful name Melody. Then everything happens in a fairly predictable manner.

As often happens, the director, who dreamed of a big movie for so long, tried to put into his debut film as much as possible of everything that he himself loves in cinema. And, as often happens, everything turned out unconvincing and too banal from a plot point of view. But what turned out really well was the picture “Good Night” - the gloomy gray colors of Harry’s apartment, the fantastic colors in the dreams of the main character, shot with some kind of English mood of the streets of New York. This, however, is entirely the merit of cinematographer Gilles Nuttgen, but not director Jack Paltrow, who, apparently, the movie didn’t turn out exactly the way he wanted.

In Moscow cinemas from August 9

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