A gripping story driven largely by four fantastic performers - Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Dianne Wiest and Richard Jenkins, it tends to wander but makes its point and keeps you fascinated even though the plot twists seem unnccessary to a story which pretends to be romantic comedy in the opening scene until it goes in a different but marvelous direction. Keaton plays the role Woody Allen used to play decades ago when Keaton was once his co-star in several movies he directed. The central theme - four people brought together in sometimes isolated wilderness settings for purpose "A", yet finding their own way through self realization plan "B" was more tightly and brilliantly done by Deborah Kerr and Richard Burton leading the brilliant cast of "Night of the Iguana". To the four leads are added two supposedly supporting players who probably have as many lines and as much screen time as do the leads- the housekeeper of the second mountain home owned by Keaton and Kline and the nephew of Kline. These two supporting characters end up on a romance of their own which seems not necessary to the story- one does some soul searching in the fashion of the four leads but finds out less and one does no soul searching at all while playing what is normally the deus es machina to send the four leads out into unknown backwoods country in which much of the realizations take place.
Review of Darling Companion
