October 20, 1995
There’s fun in the cards
Joan Bunke
At The Movies
“Solitaire for 2” pits a romantic predator against a realistic psychic in a romantic comedy that’s British-quirky to the core. It’s fun, clever, lightweight – a spritzy tonic to a movie season weighed down by too many thrillers that disgust rather than entertain.
Writer-director Gary Sinyor plays with the theme of manipulation here, via his handsome, heartless hero, Daniel Becker (Mark Frankel).
Daniel’s played the field for years – lots of sex, lots of fun, no commitments. He has one of those make-work jobs that corporations offer in lieu of work that contributes to society: He’s a lecturer on body-language to middle-class business types in brown suits who want to read the competition’s mind.
A control freak, Daniel plays his manipulative games with anything female, including the blond, buxom motorcycle cop who keeps pulling him over in his souped-up sports car.
For sport, he zeroes in on Katie Burill, a paleontologist who also has ESP, or something like extrasensory perception. She reads Daniel’s tricky mind – and she doesn’t like the sex-driven plotting she gets from her “readings.”
“There’s more to life than lust,” she snarls. As for Daniel, he’s interested in conquest, nothing more. “Once we’ve done it,” he says, “I can forget about it.”
Katie keeps fobbing him off. Matter of fact, she’s very physical: She punches him every chance she gets. Daniel comes back for more, playing it cool but drawn by her brush-off. Round and round they go – bouncing their
gripes with each other off Daniel’s happily married friends.
Katie even reads Daniel’s dreams – and she’s really ticked when she discovers he’s having an erotic dream about Caroline (Maryam D’Abo), wife of his best friend, Harry (Jason Isaacs).
The Katie-Daniel dates – whether in restaurants or at the National History Museum (and listening to a band called Right Said Fred) – turn into disasters. They’re further complicated by Katie’s research partner, Dr. Sandip (Roshan Seth), who plays a crafty professional game that turns personal in a way that sets Katie to punching again.
Round and round the two mini-monster egos go, falling in love along the way, of course, and popping off crisp dialogue. Director Sinyor favors jump- cutting and letting us fill in the blanks. It’s a refreshing change from the A-B-C stuff we usually get in American films.
A fringe benefit of the story is that Sinyor shot some of the night scenes in the greenery-draped Colonnade on Hampstead Heath. It’s a mysterious and enchanting night location worth the whole film – which is a delight for its actors, its sense of great fun and a couple of tunes, “Love Is the Drug” and ” All the Love We Need.”
7 “Solitaire for 2” – Written and directed by Gary Sinyor, produced by Sinyor and Richard Holmes; with Amanda Pays, Mark Frankel, Maryam D’Abo, Jason Isaacs, Roshan Seth, Liza Walker. Cavalier features. Rated * * *, as Joan Bunke sees it, on a rising scale from no stars (hopeless) to five stars (excellent).
