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"Lady" a fairy tale with frights
Movie Review: Lady in the Water
By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic
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PLAY OFFICIAL TRAILER
Paul Giamatti (Sideways, Cinderella Man) heads the multi-ethic cast, playing a stuttering maintenance man at a Philadelphia apartment building called the Cove. His dispirited handyman is obviously overqualified for the job, but he nonetheless goes conscientiously about his work.
The Cove must be the United Nations of apartment complexes. Its residents include a huge Hispanic family, a pair of adult Indian siblings (one of them played by the gloomy Shyamalan), a single African-American dad and son, a talkative young Asian woman and her stern mother and a slacker Englishman who hangs out with a bunch of other guys who do nothing but lounge around.
Strange things start happening when Giamatti spots someone swimming in the pool after dark. Turns out the pool-curfew violator is a mystery being from another world. An animated explanation for her presence among humans is given during an illustrated prelude to Lady in the Water’s live action. She is among a handful of messengers dispatched from the aquatic Blue World to help mankind. But humans, being obsessed with war and materialism, may have forgotten how to hear the visitors’ wisdom.
Giamatti easily accepts the nymph. He must believe that she is from another world or else Shyamalan wouldn’t have a story to tell. The earnest handyman promptly begins looking for ways to help the nymph return to her world. Because she says little, it’s a puzzling task. The few words the nymph does offer reveal that she is terrified.
Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of actor Ron Howard, plays the nymph as a wide-eyed angel child. “I am scared,” she tells Giamatti. “I will stay with you.”
Conveniently, several apartment residents are destined to help solve the mystery of the nymph who swam to Philadelphia. One of them may be the building’s newest tenant, a snobby film and book critic (Bob Balaban). Shyamalan’s definitely working from a degree of truth, but he paints a vicious character study of a critic, in part by giving him an ego as bloated as, say, a Hollywood film director. Maybe the director’s feelings were hurt by all those bad reviews of The Village.
Shyamalan plays much of Giamatti’s investigation for laughs. Giamatti, for instance, acts like a 3-year-old in order to entice an Asian woman into telling him an ancient folk tale that may explain the nymph’s secrets. It’s a silly scene, but gung-ho Giamatti dives in and wins the laughs.
The quietness of Lady in the Water and its mundane apartment locale set the movie’s shocks up. Something wicked is out there by the pool and it’s stalking the nymph. Any humans between it and her risk being collateral damage.
Fans of Shyamalan, a true cinematic stylist, will find themselves in familiar waters with Lady in the Water. If they don’t ask too many questions, Shyamalan’s latest tale may once again pull them into his special world.
