Words and Pictures

Words and Pictures with Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche

You've probably never even heard of the movie, Words and Pictures, because it's received no press to speak of and the few reviews it has receive have been mediocre at best.

Dave and I loved it.

On the surface it's about a man teaching honors English and a woman teaching honors art in an upscale boarding school who have a contest to see which is more important, words or pictures.

Binoche art work in the movie and in real life.

But that's not what it's really about.  It's a redemptive love story about two middle aged, complicated, struggling, broken adults falling in love.  He's an alcoholic and she's disabled - and not from some exciting accident skiing in the Alps.  She has rheumatoid arthritis.

The great French actor, Juliette Binoche, age 50, plays the artist.  She is, in fact, in real life an artist and all of the art work in the film is hers.

The great English actor, Clive Owen, age 49, plays the writer.

The have some of their best dialogue leading up to and during a loving making scene.  This is truly a love story for adults.  And, one of my favorite themes in literature, redemption.

We want to see it again.

Binoche and art. 

But it's not for everybody.  When we were standing in line for tickets there were four cool looking young men in their twenties with ripped muscles and interesting tattoos in front of us.  I asked them what they were going to see.  One of them said 22 Jump Street.  I told them we were seeing Words and Pictures. 

"What's that?"

"It's a love story about two middle aged messed up people"

He said:  "You don't want to see that.  See 22 Jump Street."

I told him we'd consider it but we hadn't seen 21 Jump Street so maybe we wouldn't be able to follow the plot.

They just looked at me.


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