ada the leading man is my tpye
Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable
Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing
Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
rzajac Not a perfect flick, but certainly above average. Just a lovely, believable story of boy-girl love transcending class.Good production; crisp writing; good direction and actors who can follow that direction, and then some.The only remonstrance I have is offset by the simplicity of the straight-up story, as it stands: The basic scenario is pretty simple, and I don't consider it a "spoiler" to outline it here: Professional man suffering from personal love-loss meets working class gal 16(?) years his senior. They fall in love. She feels the tension that her class imposes on his social milieu. She splits. He chases her down and takes his class down a notch in a show of good faith. She accepts him back into her life. Happy ending!OK? Simple enough for you? But the saving grace of the flick is that as it proceeds, the writing, direction, and acting are so very strong, that they bear the viewer along like a surging river.So: Check it out.
smatysia James Spader seemed to only play characters who behave in off-beat ways. I suppose that if everything was normal, then there wouldn't be anything to have a movie about, but he corners the the market on creepy obsession. Anyway, aside from that the film isn't particularly bad. And people do fall for spectacularly unsuitable matches all the time. When I first saw this film, I was closer to Max's twenty-seven than to Nora's forty-three, and I understood the characters in a different way than I did yesterday, when Nora is now a young woman to me. She loves Max, but makes no effort to fit in in his world. She is too angry about the class differences. It was/is the way of the world.
nickcgardner This is a straightforward and touching film, and a treat for anyone who enjoys watching actors - especially either of these two - playing small scale scenes recognisable from every day life. They play well together and I suspect the way the director enabled them to work had a hand in this. Unusually, the film is set in St. Louis.The film is often under rated and its central relationship derided as implausible. I believe this is unfair and misses the point of the film.It's a simple tale of class, differing social milieu and how people's social circles influence the choices we make in life. This couple resolve these issues by moving to another city, but not all of us can so readily choose this option.Is their relationship implausible? Well aside from the obvious point that Susan Sarandon (Nora,) looks radiant most of the time, and probably never looked better on film, Spader's character (Max,) is not quite as preppy as he appears, and has more in common with Nora than first meets the eye. There is of course, their shared grief, but Max's mother(Edith,) appears in two scenes, and she is, I believe, a key to understanding their relationship.Edith has a Brooklyn type accent which points to Max having something of a working class background himself, and further, he has ambivalent feelings towards her - for one thing, she is uncomfortable in formal social settings. I think these suggest that Max's attraction to Nora is not nearly as left field as it may appear. Further, I see a facial similarity between the actors, especially around the eyes and mouth, which social psychologists often cite as a predictor of couple attraction.As to whether the film is any good...? I think it portrays the joys, tensions and compromises of the early stages of a relationship very convincingly. They have a lot of sex, they have rows, they make up, they meet each other's friends, they annoy each other, they work their way through issues. It's not War and Peace, but it does reflect every day life quite consonantly. It has some inspired comic touches - "the sandwich" springs to mind - a solid chemistry between the two stars, and some touching pieces of observation such as when Max tenderly explores Nora's belongings reminiscently of Garbo in Queen Christina.If you fancy a touching love story, well acted, with stand back and don't get in the way direction, and with gentle undercurrents of social commentary, then The White Palace is worth a shot. If you check the voting for it, you'll see that quite a few people agree with me!
MarieGabrielle there are very few romance or romantic comedies, which strike a real note for the audience, or anyone who appreciates reality and decent acting.This film does have that. Sarandon is very good; she is a "down-at-heel" waitress, almost twenty years older than the character portrayed by Spader. Some of the interactions are amusing and sad. Her drinking, her loss of a child. Spader's background is respectable, white-collar but bored, he meets Sarandon after missing his deceased wife.Films like this are sometimes underrated. There was not a lot of hype about this film, which is one of the reasons I like it (We do not need Hollywood to tell us what's good, i.e. "The Break Up", which was actually not good).While the scenes with Spader's relatives were a bit stereotyped, overall there are a few good messages here. Life doesn't always work out how we want, "perfect couples" aren't necessarily happy, and the Spader character was actually quite good, not being the negative insensitive character here. Definitely worth viewing. 8/10.
