Feast of Love is based on a series of vignettes by the
novelist Charles Baxter set in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But for one reason
or another, says its director, Robert Benton, he couldn’t shoot in Ann
Arbor, so he brought a film crew to Portland instead.
“Portland didn’t feel too big—kind of like a university town,”
he says. “There’s a kind of memory of the ’60s, and I love that about
Portland.”
In other words, it’s cheap to shoot here. To give Benton credit,
though, the movie does go so far as to give our smug slacker haven some
lines of its own, even if Portland has lost the malevolent edginess it
had when Gus Van Sant shot Drugstore Cowboy here in
1989.
Now Portland’s screen character is that of a benign matchmaker. A
coffee shop owner, Bradley Thomas (Greg Kinnear), gets chatting with
the adulterous Diana (Radha Mitchell), who’s kept from leaving by a
rainstorm. (That coffee shop, by the way? The Fresh Pot on N
Mississippi.) Meanwhile, Bradley’s wife, Kathryn (Selma Blair) meets
her lesbian lover at a softball game, while Morgan Freeman’s character,
Harry Scott, begins the movie carrying a bag from Powell’s. How
Portland is that?
Hang on a minute. Did somebody say “lesbian lover?” Yes, indeed.
Times have changed not just for Portland, but for Benton, too. Now
almost 75, he co-wrote the screenplay for 1967’s Bonnie and
Clyde, but famously agreed with the movie’s director, Arthur Penn,
to remove a scene featuring a ménage à trois between Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde (Warren Beatty) and their
co-bank robber, C.W. Moss (Michael Pollard). Penn convinced him the
audience would think the characters were “sex freaks,” says Benton. But
does he think moviegoers are more open to plots involving alternative
sexualities these days?
“Definitely,” he says. “I think today you could do Bonnie and
Clyde with that original story in it, and it’d be fine. I totally
think that’s one of the great, positive things that’s happened in
movies.”
To that end, Feast of Love is uncompromising in its portrayal
of lesbians, adulterers, and star-crossed straight lovers alike.
Indeed, love in Feast of Love is energizing and regenerative,
but also profoundly destructive, though the reliably typecast Freeman
(who plays the same wizened, sagacious man he has in The Shawshank
Redemption, Unforgiven, and countless other films) is the
only character to understand this.
That said, all of Feast of Love‘s Portland-flavored charm and
emotional honesty likely isn’t going to net Benton another
Oscar—sure, the film’s an enjoyable, intelligent fall romance,
but its attributes end there. Still, you should probably go see it
anyway, if only to point out Reed College.