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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Among its other accomplishments, "Laurel Canyon"is to be congratulated for addressing the ever-topical question of whether, why, and, above all, where you should have sex with your mother-in-law-to-be. The answers, in case you're interested, are as follows: "Why not?,""Why not?,"and "In an outdoor pool as warm and steamy as soup."Better still, the movie asks the question not of a man but of a woman. Alex (Kate Beckinsale) is a research scientist who wears spectacles and makes love to her fiance, Sam (Christian Bale), with her T-shirt bunched primly over her bosom. Alex is, in brief, a little Miss, and it is the business of this film, written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, to turn her into a hottie. No such hope for Sam, a medical resident, who manages to look even more battened-down than his beloved. He gets a position at a psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles, and the couple flies from the East Coast to the West, where Sam's mother, Jane (Frances McDormand)--a record producer, bereft of bra, husband, and hangups--rules over her jungly lair. She Tarzan, she Jane.
This is a plum of a part, and McDormand gorges herself. For one thing, she gets to toy with young flesh, and, from where I was sitting, the delight that dawned on her face as the buttons were slowly...
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