In the Land of Women
Adam Brody can carry a movie. This should come as some relief to those of us – and I somewhat sheepishly include myself in this category – who fell in love with him as Seth Cohen on “The O.C.” Like the early seasons of that guilty-pleasure teen soap, “In the Land of Women,” Brody’s first star vehicle, finds the potency lurking in familiar domestic and romantic complications. He plays Carter Webb, a soft-porn screenwriter who’s dumped by his actress girlfriend and decamps to Michigan to care for his elderly grandmother, played by Olympia Dukakis at her saltiest. Carter then becomes entangled in the lives of the family across the street – in particular the mom and her teenage daughter. Meg Ryan and Kristen Stewart, who play the parts, look like they really could be related, and their long-simmering animosity scans accurately too. “In the Land of Women” is Ryan’s first movie in three years, and I think it may herald her renaissance. Writer-director Jon Kasdan, the son of Hollywood veteran Lawrence Kasdan, understands her strengths. Ryan is frisky but not cutesy, and emotion pours out of her with speed and precision. Brody, meanwhile, manages to suggest callowness and wisdom coexisting. His assured performance, trapped between adolescence and manhood, speaks more eloquently about his generation’s desire to find its place in the world than anything Zach Braff did in “Garden State.” “In the Land of Women” ultimately succumbs to a pat ending, but it’s a smart and funny look at how empathy for others can illuminate the self.
LISTEN: In the Land of Women