Coming Of Age In The New Millennium-Kristine Stewart’s “In The Land Of Women” (2007)-A Film Review

Coming Of Age In The New Millennium-Kristine Stewart’s “In The Land Of Women” (2007)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Josh Breslin   

In The Land Of Women, starring Meg Ryan, Kristine Stewart, Adam Brody, 2007   

You know getting old, getting older, whatever you want to call it sucks. Take the genesis of this film review of In The Land Of Women for example. When Greg Green the site manager (and overall editor) asked if I wanted to do this film review I thought he said it starred Adrian Brody. I immediately agreed since I have liked Adrian Brody as far back as when he did that role as rock and roll record producer Leonard Chess in Chess Records. It was not until I saw the film credits as I was watching the start of this movie that I realized that this was a different Brody. Well in for a dime in for a dollar so I watched the thing, although in parts that was a close thing since while I have written many articles about my “coming of age” experiences I don’t necessarily like to see such plotlines in the cinema.  So I am paying penance for some silly borderline senility. Hey, I told you getting old sucks, didn’t I.

Strangely, and maybe not by intent, there are actually five coming of age stories running through this plotline, at least five that were developed enough to recognize. Let’s start with twenty-something Carter, the ADAM Brody role, a writer who had been dumped by his La La Land celebrity starlet girlfriend and decided to go to clean air suburban heartland Michigan to see his aging morbid and cynical grandmother who lives in fear of dying, or something like that (a bit of a different coming of age agreed but part of the general life cycle) and get a fresh start. While in the neighborhood he strikes up a series of conversations with a maybe forty-something woman neighbor of Granny’s Sarah, played by foxy Meg Ryan, who has two daughters one a tween and one a teen, Lucy played by a younger fox Kristine Stewart, and an errant husband having an affair off to the side. (By the way the guy no great shakes was a fool to drop Sarah for some floozy and she was well rid of him.) Sarah was facing the hard coming of middle age fact of breast cancer not unfortunately uncommon among women of her age group. The two daughters, the too precocious tween facing coming puberty and Lucy facing sexual choices straight up round out the theme. So five and that is that. (I didn’t include that errant dad who probably was facing his own male attractiveness age question, the teen guy Lucy winds up with in that same weird sexual choices night as her or that ex-girlfriend of Carter’s who had her own quest to look into since as I said they were never really developed).

As my old friend and fellow writer here likes to say with that preview “here is the skinny.” Out in Michigan after seeing what kind of hell he was going to have to deal with tending to dear deranged Granny he strikes up that friendship with older woman Sarah who lives across the street. No question she is attracted to him and he to her a bit but with her medical problems you know a twenty-something guy on average is not going get tangled into that mess (and then there is that errant husband who may come back to the roost one day). That thing plays out a bit and meanwhile young impressible but smart younger women Lucy seems to be ready to take dead aim at him as some kind of rock she can hold onto since she is in the inevitable “mother doesn’t understand her” stage and as is well worn information by now dad is off with some mistress. (Carter’s mother gave us the key to what is what with the lad when she said to him before he headed East that he had always been attractive to women. Hell even the tween was head over heels for the guy.)     

Things bump along for a while with Sarah taking her treatments, Lucy trying to figure out the sex stuff on her own without mother’s help, and Granny going over the top with her ranting on and on about dying. Through all of this Carter is writing and in a way getting some mature insights and getting over that worthless ex-girlfriend. In a film which is about the land of women that seems odd that he would get his issues resolved as a central outcome but so be it. As Kenny Klein always said “it’s all good.” Sarah comes to terms with her cancer and her relationship with Lucy, Lucy finds some streak of happiness with a soda jerk, sorry showing my age, an Orange Julius server, and comes to terms with her mother and that tween, well, she will have to wait until the hormones settle down. As for Granny maybe she knew herself best of all even if only in the negative. She dies on camera. I don’t know if I can recommend this one in a serious way but what the heck I did the review and I didn’t crucify ADAM Brody for my own mistake.