Dear Diary: "Go!"
Easy Virtue is the sort of movie that you have to see a second time, in order to decide whether it is better than you thought the first time — or worse. The only certainty is that you won’t remain undecided. I think that I’ll find Easy Virtue to be better. But I’m too jaded to believe that my adoration of Kristin Scott Thomas will blind me to the drawbacks of the other actress. I wish that I’d memorized some of KST’s great lines, but they were great only because she said them at the time. Out of context — pffft. She and Jennifer Biel do construst a scrumptious-looking, towering meringue of mutual insult. Whatever it is, they can top it.
I ate both of the day’s meals in old-line French restaurants: not temples of gastronomy of the kind that used to rule the earth (under Manhattan, anyway) but hole-in-corner places that were long ago designed to remind New Yorkers of the Left Bank of Paris, or perhaps of a star-crossed romance in Dijon or Angers. One of the restaurants — I shall name no names — defies the waning suitability of its location, in a Subcontinental district, with a convincing demonstration of culinary excellence. The other, stationed more or less like a baleen whale near schools of querulous diners, is rapidly approaching Williamsburg Restoration status with respect to cuisine in general, and to French cuisine even more generally. I enjoyed both meals, but not in the same way. I am very glad that my companion at one of them — no names! — was not the companion at the other. Although vice versa would have worked nicely.
At seven o’clock, Kathleen and I were sitting in the third row — Row A — of the Jacobs Theatre (formerly the Royale), hoping that we were ready for God of Carnage, Yasmin Reza’s play about two couples who are trying to work out the consequences of an altercation between their eleven year-old sons. The cast, like that of Waiting for Godot, is ne plus ultra: Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels, and James Gandolfini. What a privilege it is to sit before such a range of talents! Even if I was terrified that Mr Gandolfini and Mr Daniels would come to blows. Like every other married man in the house, I wondered if I and my marriage could or would fall apart so drastically (but inconsequentially) if I were put into the characters’ competitive predicament.