The Yellow Handkerchief (2010)

The Age of Commercialism

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

A road trip through Louisiana transforms three strangers who were originally brought together by their respective feelings of loneliness. Starring William Hurt, Maria Bello, Kristen Stewart and Eddie Redmayne The Yellow Handkerchief is a movie about redemption and about a man trying to find the woman he loves but also it brings all 3 of them together and they try to fight their loneliness and their life problems and by the end of it Brett goes back to May and a new love starts with Martine and Gordy. I can't really find anything bad about this movie except that is slow paced which is fine honestly for a movie like this and all 4 actors really did a great job especially Hurt, Stewart and Redmayne and if you haven't seen it check it out it deserves your time or even better your money for a rent or buy depending your taste in movies.

The character Brett Hanson has a history that unfolds at first in a series of flashbacks then orally to his two companions, Martine and Gordy. Martine, the daughter of an inter-state truck driver, is a lonely 15 year old girl looking for love and acceptance.Gordy is a lonely white young geeky computer repairman that believes himself to be Native American.Gordy owns a gas guzzling beast of car from the 1970's that transports the three of them towards the unknown in post Katrina, Louisiana.How the color yellow pops up from time to time was a nice addition to the original story. Gordy buys a yellow throwaway camera that is "preferably past its expiration date." Then, at the riverside, slams the camera against the wet rocks before he takes photos of Martine doing a few ballet positions. The resultant photos look bleached, abstract and surreal. Perhaps a commentary on how people can interpret reality differently. During a heavy downpour, Brett borrows Gordy's yellow tent to sit under instead staying in the car with his companions. A yellow fire hydrant causes a lot of grief for Brett and his wife, May. May's hair is dyed yellow.Brett has become the quintessential glass-is-half-empty sort of man that expects to be let down every day. So when he hands his wife, May, a yellow manila envelope I was able to guess its contents.And finally, a yellow handkerchief near the end.Life handed these four people lemons and they in turn made lemonade. Kudos to this wonderful cast, crew and Arthur Cohn, the producer, for making this endearing movie. p.s. I love the musical score...it is quite haunting.

Like staring at the ocean horizon from a desert island or being rocked to sleep in your mother's arms, The Yellow Handkerchief is a warm, enchanting and entrancing experience. With a story built on the calm and measured magnetism of William Hurt, illuminated with youthful flashes of spirit by Kristen Stewart and Eddie Redmayne and sheltered under the beautiful pain of Maria Bello, this film invites you in from the cold and lets you nestle in its relaxed tenderness. I'm not much for slow, sentimental tales of lost love and teenage angst, but this movie has made be reconsider that. If anyone ever tells me a motion picture is "like The Yellow Handkerchief", I'm definitely going to give it a look.Brett (William Hurt) is a grown-ass man who just got out of prison. There's no one to greet him in freedom, so he starts walking south. At a diner, he meets Martine (Kristen Stewart) and Gordy (Eddie Redmayne). One is desperately looking in others for what she can't find in her own father and the other is an awkward bundle of nerves who thinks he's Jack Kerouac but is mostly just whack. Gordy does have a convertible and the three start off on a little trip across the river and, through storm and scuffle and keep on driving until their stories spill out of them, especially the woman that Brett's bound for even though he's not sure if she'll welcome him or if he deserves it.Hurt's character is as much at the heart of this film as any I've seen, as the world-weary Brett's journey with these two emotionally exposed kids is interposed with his memories of May (Maria Bello), the damaged woman he fell in love with at the sight of her soulful face. The two tales wonderfully compliment each other as Brett is the one drawn irresistibly to May while it is Martine and Gordy who find themselves caught up in his gravitational pull. Hurt gives an award-worthy performance that is all the more notable for how he never overpowers his younger co-stars. Don't get me wrong. Stewart and Redmayne are marvelous in their own right, but it would have been so easy for Hurt to dominate the screen instead of letting Brett be merely the center of it. No one would have objected, yet that ultimately would have sucked the melodic ease out of the movie and robbed it of its human depth.Kristen Stewart also deserves a lot of praise because her role is written quite obviously. She's playing a wounded girl who's anguish is visible to anyone who looks at her, something that's not all that easy to pull off without overshooting or underplaying the affect. Redmayne's part is more overtly colorful and obtuse but it comes off a little bit like shtick. Stewart feels like a living, breathing, confounding teenage girl.I also want to single out director Udayan Prasad for praise. His narrative and visual confidence is second only to Hurt's acting in making The Yellow Handkerchief work. This story is quiet and slow and the temptation to speed it up or do something on screen visually out of fear of losing the audience's attention had to be a difficult beast to battle. Prasad let's things unfold in their own due course and perfectly balances the trio in the convertible with the flashbacks to May. This is the sort of direction where you can't easily notice what's being done, which I find much more appealing and proficient than films where the director is practically waving at you from the screen.The Yellow Handkerchief is a darling production, which is an adjective I don't think I've never used before or even appreciated what it really meant before now. Why it was not a much bigger deal when it came out is a mystery to me. Maybe Stewart's inclusion will eventually attract some Twi-hard attention to this little gem. Something good ought to come out of those sparkly vampire flicks.

'The Yellow Handkerchief' is a lovely film about redemption, faith and love. The main character is no doubt Brett Hanson (William Hurt) and he is amazing as a middle-aged, drained man. I have not seen many films with him, but I loved how he represented a life that lost its way and the unlikely road that leads back. Brett (Hurt) is a man who one night looses all that he has in a fit of anger. The journey begins when he meets Gordy, the masterful Eddie Redmayne and the 'plain-jane' Martine, an ever frustrating Kristen Stewart. Gordy, Martine and Brett take off on a Louisanna crossing to get Brett home. Martine and Gordy seem to be up for anything and that really shows as they all travel together. There is little character development on the part of Martine and Gordy, but enough to understand why it is so important that these three loss souls meet one another. If knowledge is in the journey, these three characters learn who they are and what they want out of life. It is beautiful and heartbreaking to watch the pain of discovery. Maria Bello and her short scenes are amazing as well. What this film lacks in story- it often moves a little too slow for me- it makes up double in the acting by the leads, except for Kristen. Kristen struggles throughout the film with her Southern accent- sometimes it is on full force and other times there is nothing there and that is troubling, but even more then that is her constant need to stare into space, play with her hair and bite her lip. At first I thought it was a young twitch or something, but after seeing a few movies with her in it- it really distracts from the characters she plays, and this is true with Martine. Redmayne, Hurt, Bello are in a class alone and their relationships are the heart of the film. Redmayne, the lost youth who does not seem to belong anywhere. Hurt, the man looking for redemption and meaning in a world gone mad. And Bello, waiting to heal old wounds. A heart-warming film about the roads life takes us on and the people we meet along the way that teach us.