Starring Paul Giamatti
The Lady in the Water is a beautiful, sometimes scary adult fairy tale/myth about an apartment-complex maintenance man who meets a curious visitor from another realm. A quirky collection of people live in this complex, and the film takes time to introduce us to them by following Giamatti as he fixes plumbing, electrical, and bug problems.
M. Night Shyamalan creates dense, symbol-rich movies. I think this is the best and most accessible of his films since The Sixth Sense.
I can’t describe too much of the plot; suffice to say that it’s an engaging tale of the intersection of a world of myth and magic with our own sometimes curious world.
One of the pleasures of viewing this movie is to see the slow wonder that unfolds in Giamatti. He’s moving up on to my “A” list of actors to watch for. At the beginning of the movie we see a shy, stuttering man simply doing his job. By the end, we know him a lot better, and we see a man’s passions and hopes and need for community given voice as he reaches out to many of the apartment dwellers to aid on the quest.
There are some great supporting performances, including Bob Balaban as a movie reviewer, and Cindy Cheong’s hilarious dialogs with her Chinese-speaking mother.
Along with the drama there’s a lightness and humor in the movie; Shyamalan is relaxed enough to let it all happen step by step; no slave to story, he. Shyamalan also appears as one of the characters in the story; we sense some autobiographical content.
This is a fine movie for all audiences. The scary parts are not emphasized unduly, and, overall, a sense of wonder develops that carries us along.
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