The Hottest State (2007)

People are voting emotionally.

Excellent but underrated film

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This film combines the beyond tedious work of a writer who doesn't know how to tell an interesting tale with the visual melange of a director who mistakenly thinks a multiplicity of images multiplies effect. As both the writer and director of The Hottest State, Ethan Hawke proves he should really stick to acting.Though it's gussied up with narration, flashbacks, intertwining scenes and a buttload of montages, the plot of this thing is crudely simplistic. An immature weenie named William Harding (Mark Webber) falls in love with an opaque bitch named Sarah Garcia (Catalina Sandino Morena), she breaks his heart and he spends the rest of the film moping around like a jackass. More specifically, William and Sarah's relationship goes like this…They meet and she won't have sex with him. They move in together and she still won't have sex with him. They take a trip to Mexico and she has sex with him. She says they should get married and then changes her mind after talking with her mother for 20 seconds on the phone. They spend four weeks apart and then she breaks up with him. He mopes around like a jackass and rejects an old girlfriend (played by the very sexy Michelle Williams). His mom shows up to give him all the comfort of hugging a porcupine. He visits his estranged dad and mopes around like a jackass in front of him. After some time goes by, William and Sarah reconnect. William drives from New York City to Texas with his mother and father as teenagers in the backseat.I have no idea why Ethan Hawke thought that story was something anyone needed to experience on the screen. We've all watched it a thousand times before and most of us have lived through it a time or two. The sparse detail added to the narrative only emphasizes how trite it all is.Even Hawke apparently understood how common and uninvolving his story was, because he throws everything but the kitchen sink into telling it. He wantonly violates the "one montage per good movie" rule, includes flashbacks seen from William's point of view as a child, repeatedly tries to make boring and pointless scenes more interesting by splicing them together and throughout the first 3/4ths of the movie, Hawke constantly cuts away to pointless foreshadowing shots of William riding on a train. The soundtrack is also an unceasing stream of one folksy, countryish song after another that seeps into your brain until you feel like beating Willie Nelson to death with a garden hoe. There is a nice bit of nudity in this film but that is more than canceled out by a scene where we watch William urinate into a toilet, yellowy stream and all.Hawke fails to give William or Sarah anything to do or say that is even remotely inviting. When William's mom and dad show up for the final third of the film, they turn out to be a bit engaging. That's largely because of the talent of Laura Linney and Hawke, but also because they're given relatable characteristics. Linney is allowed to play William's mom as a strong but somewhat rigid woman who's made no excuses for her life and won't accept any from others. Hawke plays the dad as someone who regrets the mistakes of his youth but has moved past them. Those little aspects of humanity make them look so much better compared to the whiny loser that is William and the indecipherable Sarah.I hope this story was autobiographical for Hawke and he got something out of making it into a movie. He'd be the only one getting anything out of it. The Hottest State is a boring tale told in an aggravating fashion that has one of those endings where things just peter out. Unless you're in the midst of getting your heart broken for the first time and want to see someone handle it even worse than you, don't bother watching this film.

This comment is aimed at those people who got the DVD of THE HOTTEST STATE as a gift from someone (or as part of a blind "grab bag" purchase, part of an inheritance, part of a theft, etc.), and are curious to see an Ethan Hawke project talk love to death WITHOUT involving Julie Delpy (BEFORE SUNRISE & BEFORE SUNSET). Rather than watching this 117-minute feature, the DVD gives you the option of viewing STRAIGHT TO ONE, a 21-minute, 29-second short from 1994 by Hawke. STO features the apparent precursors to feature protagonist William's parents Vince and Jesse in the early days of their marriage. (These characters are called Jim & Leslie Green in the short, and are played by actors who do not appear in the feature.) The story arc of the short is similar to that of the feature's two main characters, especially on an emotional level. Perhaps Hawke's message in the feature (and the combined package) is that we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our parents. This gloomy sentiment probably goes down better in a shorter dose.

I've liked Hawke as an actor but didn't go into this film with high expectations. I was surprised at how competently this was made. While it covers fairly safe territory - a romantic drama - it does it with nice visuals and some originality. The protagonist William (Mark Webber) is a bit of a slacker, yet he was introspective enough to try to resolve some of his own issues when his lover Sarah (Catalina Sandino Moreno) splits and leaves him broken-hearted. The fact that this was tackled from the male perspective, and grappled with some psychological insight gave the film some gravitas. Mind you, how deeply a twenty-one year old can delve into his psyche is another thing.I found the film quite enjoyable, more than superficial, but still largely in the "middle-of-the-road" category - not that that's a bad thing. The cinematography was great, and there were nice camera angles. The music was nice but sometimes a little intrusive. While it's the type of film that's likely to do well at Sundance (maybe it has, I don't know), it's a lot better than the quirky comedies like Little Miss Sunshine et al. This film could do well on general release and was an OK film to add some variation to my MIFF viewings, but nothing to rave about. A good effort by Hawke (who is also a guest speaker at the festival).

I saw this film at the LA Film Festival and found it to be a boring talk-fest between two largely unsympathetic, unconvincing characters. If Hawke was trying to channel Linkletter's Before Sunrise/Sunset, he should have also created characters whose motivations and reactions are at least somewhat plausible, even if they happen to be 20 year olds. On the other hand, the character portrayed by Laura Linney (the mother of male lead) is refreshing in her contribution of realism to the story. Otherwise, if you like lots of self-involved rambling about nothing much, punctuated by music videos and a few moments of soft-core porn, this is your movie.