Amos Poe’s script concerns the transformation of a woman after she is diagnosed with a terminal illness, fired from her thankless job and abandoned by her boyfriend. Given two months to live, she blows her savings and maxes out her credit cards to pursue her dreams, which include romance and learning to play the electric guitar.
“The Guitar” is a story of one woman’s spiritual, emotional and creative transformation. One morning, “mouse-burger” Melody “Mel” Wilder (Saffron Burrows) is diagnosed with a terminal illness, fired from her thankless job and abandoned by her boyfriend. With nothing left to lose, given two months to live, she spends her entire life’s savings renting an empty palatial loft in the Village.
Thinking she’ll never have to pay the piper, she lives off her credit cards, fills the loft with the fanciest products, sensually engages both the parcel-delivery man (Isaach de Bankole) and a pizza delivery girl (Paz de la Huerta) and teaches herself to play the electric guitar she’s craved since childhood. These life affirming experiences transform her irrevocably.
Review
Shopping a Life Away
Saffron Burrows, a willowy actress whose beauty and bearing suggest a more delicate Angelina Jolie, brings a measure of grace to “The Guitar,” an arty parable that suggests a New York bohemian variation on the odious “Bucket List.” As her unfortunately named character, Melody Wilder, slinks around a loft in Lower Manhattan in various states of undress, she is a visually arresting wraith gazing into the void.
All on the same day, Melody is told she has inoperable throat cancer and is given two months to live; is unceremoniously fired from her office job; and is dumped by her stuffy boyfriend. Freed from responsibility, knowing she won’t have to pay the bills, she moves into a vacant loft with a Hudson River view and maxes out her credit cards stuffing the place with furniture.
Her crowning purchase is the red guitar she coveted so avidly as a girl that she once tried to steal it. To pass the time she has sex with Cookie (Paz de la Huerta), the young woman who delivers her pizzas, and Roscoe (Isaach de Bankolé), the married man who lugs in the furniture. The film, directed by Amy Redford from Amos Poe’s screenplay, indirectly poses the question: what would you do in Melody’s shoes? Most people, I assume, wouldn’t think that buying a Vera Wang mattress should be the first order of business.
Melody, despite her beauty and refinement, apparently has no friends or family. The red guitar, plugged into the banks of Marshall speakers, symbolizes her transcendence of a drab existence. Liberated to live in the moment, she metamorphoses from a mousy beauty into a glamorous riot grrrl facing a fatal deadline.
That the movie is easy on the eyes (Melody’s fetching silhouette against those sunset river views) doesn’t make it any less bogus.
Production notes provided by Lightning Media.
The Guitar
Starring: Isaach De Bankolé, Paz de la Huerta, Janeane Garofalo, Saffron Burrows, David Wain, Chris Bauer, Ashlie Atkinson
Directed by: Amy Redford
Screenplay by: Amos Poe, Gillian Horvat
Release Date: November 7, 2008
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, nudity and language.
Studio: Lightning Media
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