You would think a sumptuously shot, sparklingly middlebrow movie like My Life So Far<\/em> would\u2019ve gotten a lot more push from Harvey and them back in the day. Pleasant period pieces that could snatch up Oscar noms and box-office tickets<\/a> were always in Weinstein\u2019s wheelhouse. Not to mention the same team behind the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire <\/em>\u2014 producer David Puttnam and director Hugh Hudson (his first film in a decade) \u2014 were also behind this film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem was, Weinstein already threw his support behind another pleasant period piece in theaters, the Oscar Wilde adaptation An Ideal Husband<\/em> (which I\u2019ll delve into in a later column). For some reason, Harvey could only concentrate on one period piece at a time. Weinstein most likely stuck with Husband<\/em> because of its\u00a0hella photogenic stars, including Oscar nominees (and eventual Oscar winners) Cate Blanchett and Julianne Moore.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n What does Life<\/em> have? Well, it\u2019s got Colin Firth, playing yet another stodgy, sexually repressed fella. He\u2019s Edward Pettigrew, an eccentric family man living with his brood in Kiloran, his family\u2019s beauteous estate, in 1920s Scotland. A Beethoven-loving Bible thumper, his life goes quietly off the rails when his hipper, globe-trotting older brother Morris (Malcolm McDowell) brings his fetching, French fiancee Heloise (Irene Jacob) to the estate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Edward isn\u2019t the only dude smitten by this good-hearted, good-smelling cellist. There\u2019s also Edward\u2019s ten-year-son Fraser (Robert Norman), aka the narrator of this story. (He\u2019s also the kid version of British TV mogul Sir Denis Forman, whose 1991 memoir Son of Adam<\/em> this movie adapts.) He gets miffed at the old man for shooing him away when Fraser and Heloise had some alone time. This makes Edward hole up in the Kiloran attic, where he reads his late grandfather\u2019s books and learns more about women \u2014 particularly naked women. It seems Grandpa had a lot of nudie sketchings tucked away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of adorably weird shit happens in Life<\/em>: the family\u2019s occasional visits from a aviator (Tcheky Karyo) who calls himself the \u201cemperor of the air\u201d (he catches the attention of Fraser\u2019s older sister, played by a barely-there Kelly Macdonald), an awkward dinner where the God-fearing grandmatriarch (Rosemary Harris \u2014 Aunt May from the Tobey Maguire-era Spider-Man<\/em> movies) accidentally gets drunk off sherry-filled trifle. But since this is a movie told from a child\u2019s perspective, we mostly get a coming-of-age tale of a kid learning about adulthood, particularly how some adults are still petulant children inside.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Originally titled World of Moss<\/em>, the movie was shot in 1997 on a $7 million budget, which included $5 million from Weinstein and $1 million from a lottery grant provided by the Scottish Arts Council. (The film was recommended by the Scottish Film Production Fund, where Forman formerly served as a chairman.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Life<\/em> was scheduled to premiere in Cannes the following May. But, of course, Harvey and them came in during post-production and demanded changes. The title was the first to go. Reshoots were also done. Even the original score was thrown out. (In a 2020 blog post<\/a>, composer Colin Matthews recalls how he didn\u2019t know his score was axed until he read in the paper that Howard Blake was the film\u2019s composer.) Surprisingly, Miramax\u2019s tinkering didn\u2019t bother Hudson, who preferred not to be rushed in post-production. “Chariots of Fire<\/em> came out two full years after it was made,” he told<\/a> The Guardian<\/em> in 2000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Life<\/em> did make it to Cannes in 1999, but it was screened out of competition; Miramax showed it as part of an American Foundation for AIDS Research fundraiser. While it may have looked like Life<\/em> was going to have a sweet one thanks to Weinstein, the movie quietly slid into theaters two months later. Some critics were kind \u2014 Roger Ebert gave it three stars<\/a> \u2014 but others were unimpressed. The San Francisco Examiner<\/em>\u2019s Wesley Morris said<\/a> it was \u201ca willfully turgid demonstration that if a filmmaker puts his mind to it he can tell a tale about a boy sexually coming of age as if the birds, bees and educated fleas were the only ones doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, Life<\/em> is chaste but bawdy when it comes to visualizing Fraser\u2019s sexual discoveries. One not-so-subtle sequence splices together shots of him looking at the nude drawings, while aggressively handling his rod during fishing. But the movie\u2019s unfocused tone is its biggest offense. It teeters between comedy of manners (several scenery chewers in the cast certainly play it that way) and dysfunctional-family dramedy. I have no doubt Harvey and his Miramax minions made things even more misguided in post-production..<\/p>\n\n\n\n With Life<\/em> making a pitiful $635,620 worldwide, Hudson\u2019s filmmaking career was even more sparse than before. He only directed two films before dying last year in London at age 86. Before he passed, he did a 2012 interview<\/a> where he briefly summed up why My Life So Far<\/em> wasn\u2019t his best by far: \u201cI had very good reviews from that film but it was dumped by the distributor Harvey Weinstein. It got in the way of something else he was promoting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My Life So Far” is available to stream on Hoopla Digital<\/a> and Pluto TV<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/my-life2-1024x576.jpg\")
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