DUET FOR ONE (1986) **1/2 The opening twenty minutes couldn't be more perfect. Andrei Chalovsky brews up a heady mix of classical music and psychology, nothing more than a bed, he assures us, for ultimate tragedy of heroic proportions. Yet with Julie Andrews as the focal point, I couldn't help thinking that Mary Poppins/Maria von Trapp would somehow weasel out of it all, perhaps bursting into song along the way. Not that Julie isn't a tremendously versatile actress. And not just that those roles were so definitive-but they were, artists need to be careful what they do when they are young but young artists do whatever they want...but also because Julie's character has that joy-founded inner strength. You can tell by everything, but most of all by her music. Nigel Kennedy's playing is the foundation of the film, and deservedly so, and Julie does an incredible job...it certainly looks like she's playing it to me. Alan Bates, Max von Sydow and Liam Neeson are slowly mixed into the brew, and although they all do a fine job of developing their characters (particularly Bates), somehow by the time that they're finished the film is worse for it. Because of who their characters are? Maybe, and again mostly Bates. All are good, but none are much fun, which is probably why Rupert Everett is able to steal every scene that he's in, playing piano to the accompaniment to, not exclusion of, the rest of the world. Meanwhile Julie languishes, which I guess is appropriate for a depiction of multiple sclerosis, but the film loses the sense of towering truth that it wielded like a birthright in the opening scenes. The problem isn't that classical music and psychology are treated in broad strokes. No, that's not it, I wouldn't necessarily understand anything much finer, and I'd certainly be suspicious over its presentation in less than two hours. The problem isn't that the insights and analyses don't fit, or that the scenes are improbable. Who could predict anyone's reaction to such a thing? The problem is that that magic, only laterally or perpendicularly in some manner unrelated to space, that flows so easily from Kennedy's fiddle remains there, and so we're left to enjoy a film that's merely poignant, well scripted and executed, and very good. Oh, well.
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