DVD review: Jane Fonda in California Suite

I don't have a lifestyle, I have a life.

So snaps Jane Fonda's Hannah Warren in California Suite.

Newsweek described her role this way, "she's a tough-as-nails Newsweek editor from New York." Time described it this way: "a tart-tongued Newsweek editor who has flown West to fight with her ex-husband over the custody of their daughter." [Played by the late Dana Plato.]
New West's Stephen Farber felt that:

Although Hannah isn't easy to like, she comes alive as one of the most vivid characters that Simon has ever created. Of course, he's lucky to have Jane Fonda interpreting his lines. This amazing actress gives her third superb performance of 1978. She conveys the restless intelligence and the offputting arrogance of a New York journalist, and she also illuminates the fears that underlie Hannah's brittle, bitchy facade. This episode is uncharacteristic of Simon; it's scintillating, poignant and thoroughly compelling."

Opposite Alan Alda, Fonda's truly amazing and it's one of the strongest segments of the film.
Once Elaine May shows up for the Walter Matthau segment, that storyline actually starts to come to life. Maggie Smith and Michael Caine do much better than the material which gets a little too sentimental near the end of their story. (Smith, playing an actress who loses the Oscar on this trip to California, actually won best supporting actress for this performance.) Then there's Bill Cosby & Richard Pryor's story and if anyone can figure that out, have at it. Cosby and Pryor are likeable. Pryor's motor appears to be revving, but the flag never comes down to let him peel rubber. He's at his best when he's irritated that Cosby and his wife got the better, bigger hotel suite. But when the whole thing is supposed to turn into an apparently madcap fight scene that destroys all it around it, the scene . . . destroys all around it.

We found this on DVD at our library. So we'd encourage others to use their libraries. Books, CDs, movies, libraries are wonderful resources.

And if you ignore the heavy handed sentiment in Maggie Smith and Michael Caine's last big scene (they wisely underplay but the lines and the incessant soundtrack betray them) and don't try to figure out the pile up that is the climax to Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby's story, you've got a movie you can sit back and enjoy.

Strong performances from Jane Fonda, Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, Alan Alda, Richard Pryor,
Elaine May and Walter Matthau. (This is a reteaming for May and Matthua. They paired up prior in the Elaine May directed film A New Leaf.)

But we're going to focus on Fonda for two reasons. The first is that, having viewed the trailer, we're thinking her role in Monster-in-Law will be similar to Hannah. Again, she's battling over a child (in California Suite, it's over custody of her daughter; in Monster-in-Law it's over her son who wants to marry Jennifer Lopez). Again, she's got short hair again and looks amazing. So we're hoping for some of the time bombs that only Fonda can detonate when she's playing brittle.

The second reason is because she's so amazing in California Suite. Prepare to take delight as she strokes then slams Alda's character. "You were terrific when you used to write like that. I haven't seen your newest film. I'm told it grossed very well in backward areas." A flurry of motion whether blow drying her hair, pacing the room, or inhaling cigarettes, you can't take your eyes off her portrait of tightly strung woman. "Relaxing" on the beach, she's a study in motion.
In her initial scene, laying on a couch, she's doing the New York Times crossword, smoking a cigarette and checking her watch.

After all that motion, don't miss the moment when she registers that there's no point in taking Jenny (their daughter) home with her. Note the physicality of that moment, as all the tension seems to vanish from her body. There's not a lot of movement in most films of Simon plays. Fonda's done better by him than most because she's not just memorizing lines, then showing up on the set hoping the director might have a blocking idea. She comes at a character with strong ideas of how they speak, how they move and what's inside. Here, movement is the key to Hannah and when all the wind goes out of her sails, Fonda registers that physically.

The storyline is saved from the soggyness that harms the climax of Smith & Caine's story by the fact that Hannah quickly rearms. The barriers go back up, the lines are bitten and tossed again, and she's back in motion.

The DVD's only real "extra" is that you can watch it in full screen or wide screen. Fonda sears the screen in either version.