As Seen On TV: The City of Your Final Destination

The City of Your Final Destination feels like someone's rough draft of an "art house" film, in which the characters do things like eat meals outdoors at long tables and ponder turning their land into a vineyard. A young academic named Omar (Omar Metwally) hopes to make his name by writing a biography of a deceased novelist names Jules Gund. Omar turns up at the Gund estate in Uruguay, where the novelist's widow (Laura Linney), mistress (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and brother (Anthony Hopkins) are living out a Chekovian existence of mulling over the past and alcohol. The question of whether or not Omar will get permission to write the biography never takes hold, since we're told everything important about Gund in an early home movie scene. So, we get a few gentle moments between Hopkins and his partner (Hiroyuki Sanada) but the rest of these characters never jump off the page; though Gainsbourg's warmth provides some distraction,. Director James Ivory (working without the late Ismail Merchant as producer) doesn't get anything out of the setting - the film was shot in Colorado, Argentina, and Canada. A Room With A View this isn't. I've never seen an Ivory film set in the present where the characters seemed full-blooded, and since The City of Your Final Destination may well be his last feature (Ivory is in his 80's.) I'll choose to remember what he and Mr. Forster did for us, and for each other.