Berlin review: Rebecca Miller’s “She Came To Me” starring Anne Hathaway, Peter Dinklage and Marisa Tomei

It would take a heart of stone to leave Rebecca Miller she came to me don’t want to pick up sticks and live on a tugboat, preferably one piloted by Marisa Tomei. Tomei’s tugboat captain Katrina, with her gently weathered face, earthy wit, and slightly sociopathic “love addiction,” is a downright fantastic rom-com heroine, albeit she came to me can be called a romcom. And in Peter Dinklage, at his darkest as the perpetually panicking, creatively blocked composer Katrina, targeted for her romantic ardor, she has her perfect match. Props to Carlo Chatrian, artistic director of the Berlin Film Festival, for pulling it off she comes to me: light but sharp, this is a perfect opener.

Not that it’s a two-horse show: in the screwball tradition, there’s a lot more going on here than a cute middle-aged reunion. At the beginning, Miller moves between the sparse opulence of an opera house lobby – where Stephen van Dinklage hides from his patrons behind a potted plant – and a humble suburban house, home to the mean Trey (Brian D’Arcy James). Hofstenographer who gets his kicks by dressing up for Civil War re-enactments – and his Polish partner Magdalena (Joanna Hulig, known as the glamorous star of Cold War) who cleans houses. Her own house teems with the tension one feels when the man in the next room has an arsenal of 18^ecentury muskets.

Magdalena’s daughter Tereza (Harlow Jane) is 16 and busy with her scientific studies in a way that Trey finds disturbingly un-American. He and Magdalena have no idea that she is also devoted to her boyfriend Julian (Evan Ellison), the equally smart but much more privileged son of Stephen’s wife Patricia (Anne Hathaway), until she comes to clean Patricia’s house and jumps her own daughter while snacking. from Patricia’s fridge. This is the first of several surprise meetings that are both fun and make a bigger statement.

So Magdalena cleans toilets for her daughter’s friend’s family. She is uncomfortable. At least that’s what she can say. Patricia says nothing, but clearly tries to circumvent the two obstacles to her own snobbery: that her son sees the cleaning lady and that it bothers her. Surprising in a way, because Patricia likes nothing better than cleaning herself. As a girl in a Catholic boarding school, she confesses, she secretly peeked into the cells of the teaching nuns and envied their spotlessly clean mess. She will accept Marie Kondo’s directive to keep only what brings you joy, except nothing really.

She is only slightly less concerned than Trey when he finally meets Julian and sees that he is multiracial. Like that unspoken rumbling about class, he doesn’t have to say anything to let you know he’s ready for a fight. While nothing is as embarrassing as the situation that arises after Stephen meets Katrina at a bar while walking the dog and ends up on her Spanish bedspread; and writes an opera about it (beautifully written, along with the rest of the music that flows like water between scenes, by The National’s Bryce Dessner) – who turns up unexpectedly to see Katrina on opening night. Well, imagine.

Hathaway is great, Dinklage is great, Tomei is great. But there are many comedic and dramatic elements used in this film; One reason the central romance is so gripping is that it doesn’t have to carry the full load of plot or emotion. And perhaps the greatest romance is that salty smell of life above and below decks.

Katrina is located in Baton Rouge – laissez les bons temps rouler! – but chugging along the coast and eastern rivers in her father’s old boat. It’s a rusty old thing, but cute with memorabilia, including an old organ in the kitchen where Stephen beats out a tune and the grumpy crew sing along as they play roulette – a game with an added element of chance, given the roll of the boat -.” in the evening. When Stephen makes his inevitable declaration of love, it’s over a cup of fennel tea on the bridge, with the New Jersey coastline visible through a smeared window and Tomei looking beautifully unglamorous in her boatswain ‘s smooth.

what is she came to me here to tell us? That said, it is possible to find true love at 11:00 in a bar. That you can get hit if you write an opera about a boat captain in a leather beret. That true love can come to us at 16 or 60. That a woman who ages without makeup or other noticeable facial changes can be the most beautiful person in any room. And that a life by the sea is my life. Maybe only in stories, but why stories?