Having dismissed the 1946 Cole Porter bio-musical NIGHT AND DAY as a decorous whitewash, director Irwin Winkler and screenwriter Jay Cocks re-imagine composer Porter's life as a grand romance in which his love of men was a mere peccadillo, eclipsed by true love for his wife, Linda.
The film opens as a director (Jonathan Pryce) escorts the aged and ailing Porter (Kevin Kline) to a theatrical run-through of the musical of his life, beginning in Paris in 1918. There the 27-year-old dilettante meets Linda (Ashley Judd), recently divorced, eight years his senior, and admired equally for her beauty and lavish parties. She's heard all about Porter's liaisons with other men but is too sophisticated to lose a soul mate over such a minor complication. With their swellegant best friends, moneyed jazz-age bohemians Sara and Gerald Murphy (Sandra Nelson, Kevin McNally), they become glittering twin stars in the firmament of the expatriate social scene, conquering Broadway, Hollywood, and their own tempestuous emotional squalls.
The glamorous journey takes Porter and Linda through a series of guest performances by pop singers ranging from Alanis Morissette, whose version of "Let's Fall in Love" is startlingly good, to Sheryl Crow, whose languorous "Begin the Beguine" is simply painful. That Kline, 56, is too old to play Porter during most of the story's timeframe is a minor problem. More distracting is that Cocks and Winkler structure the story as a clunky amalgam of backstage (Porter and his friends were the-a-tah folk, after all) and fantasy musical conventions. The resulting awkward, earthbound mishmash thoroughly overshadows Judd's and Kline's authentically moving performances. What kind of romance is that? Read the complete review for De-Lovely
