Paul Haggis returns to the template of his 2004 Oscar winner “Crash” for his newest, “Third Person,” which, like many of the films of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, intertwines different story threads involving disparate characters into a commentary on a single theme. The tactic doesn’t work as well in this instance as it has in the past, especially since the device that ties everything together in the end proves to be one of those authorial tricks as likely to frustrate as to enlighten. But along the way to an unsatisfying conclusion, the film raises some troubling questions and offers some strong acting.
The chief protagonist is Michael (Liam Neeson), a flailing Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist ensconced in a Paris hotel, where he’s trying to bang out a new book on his laptop. Estranged from his wife Elaine (Kim Basinger) back in America, he’s visited by his young lover Anna (Olivia Wilde), with whom he engages in sexy games of one-upsmanship while he criticizes her writing efforts. Anna, it turns out, has a secret too, one that involves another man.
Meanwhile Scott (Adrien Brody), an American in Rome to illicitly acquire designs from a high-end fashion house to produce profitable knock-offs, meets Morika (Moran Atias), a seductive gypsy woman, in a bar and is immediately smitten with her. It emerges that she’s desperate to pay a smuggler named Carlo (Vinicio Marchioni) the remainder of the fee she owes to bring her daughter from Romania, and Scott is determined to help her, though he realizes the entire scenario might be an elaborate scam.
Back in New York City, Julia (Mila Kunis), a high-strung actress, is equally desperate in her efforts to secure visits with her son Jesse (Oliver Crouch), who’s been placed in the custody of his father Rick (James Franco), a renowned artist, and his girlfriend Sam (Loan Chabanol). Trying to prove her stability by taking a job as a hotel maid, Julia irks her lawyer Theresa (Mario Bello) by missing court dates, dooming her visitation chances as Sam looks on despairingly at Rick’s intransigence on the matter.
As the film shuttles among these three plots, the viewer is bound to notice some peculiarities. Most obviously, if Julia’s tale is unfolding in New York, how does she seem to be cleaning Michael’s Parisian suite? Why is Theresa so emotionally invested in her client’s plight, even as she expresses doubts about the wisdom of granting her visitation? What’s the motivation that drives Scott, who listens obsessively to a saved message from his daughter on his phone, to sacrifice so much for Monika? What caused the rift between Michael and Elaine? Who is the mysterious man Anna goes to visit?
In the end Haggis provides an answer to these questions with a twist that some viewers are bound to find little more than a cheat. It does, however, tie the various strands of the plot together with a theme that’s actually announced early on when a child’s voice is heard on the soundtrack saying “Watch me”—words that are repeated by Jesse to Rick later in the film. Ultimately the “Third Person” in the picture is the child, seen or unseen, who places his or her trust in a parent, and the motif becomes the responsibility every parent has toward his or her child—as well as the grief and guilt that occur when that bond is broken.
It’s a potent idea that virtually everyone can relate to from one perspective or another, and it can’t help haven’t an impact even though Haggis succeeds more inlaying it out intellectually than in dramatizing it emotionally; when the revelations come, they’re more like the pieces of a puzzle falling into place than the answer to the profundities he wants to address. But the acting is so strong across the board that although the accumulation of characters and the constant turns from one plot to another and back again mean that none of them are fully realized, the overall effect is nonetheless pretty compelling. Neeson, as usual, is the anchor here, but Wilde brings a sense of abandon to Anna that meshes nicely with his more dour demeanor; and though Kunis’ performance could hardly be called subtle, Franco’s employment of his sinister edge is on the money. In Rome Brody strikes a nice balance between oiliness and brusque sincerity, while Atias is suitably exotic and volatile. The rest of the cast, including Bello and Basinger, are truly on the sidelines here, but all are at least adequate to their tasks.
Technically matters are fine if not particularly outstanding, with Gian Filippo Corticelli’s cinematography making good use of the globe-trotting locales and Dario Marianelli contributing an appropriately evocative score. A film like this requires especially sensitive editing, and Jo Francis’ work in the cutting room keeps things flowing and clear.
Simultaneously enigmatic and overstated, “Third Person” is one of those imperfect films that’s nevertheless more intriguing than conventionally stronger but less challenging ones.