[SIZE="6"]DAVID SIEGEL, SCOTT MCGEHEE: WHAT MAISIE KNEW (2013)[/SIZE]


JULIANNE MOORE AND ONATA APRILE IN WHAT MAISIE KNEW

Where are the grownups?

Viewers of the new film by Scott McGehee and David Siegel (The Deep End) unfamiliar with Henry James's eponymous 1897 novel may be surprised how similar its outlines are to this seemingly very modern tale of a poor little rich New York girl and the irresponsible and confused adults who shuttle her back and forth. James was being very up-to-date: his little Maisie, like the one played by the preternaturally composed Onata Aprile, was the child of divorced parents, who used her as a bargaining card and object of contention. The father in James's novel married the nanny, just as Steve Coogan marries Joanna Vanderham, the Scottish au pair. There's no likable but weak Sir Claude for Maisie's mom Julianne Moore -- titled Englishmen aren't so thick on the ground in modern Manhattan. But she quickly gets hitched to a likable but weak fellow, the tall young bartender Lincoln, played by Alexander Skarsgård. And these new couples soon start fighting, and the new spouses pair off with each other -- just as happens in Henry James. This new movie, the 2013 San Francisco International Film Festival's opening night film, may be Siegel's and McGehee's best so far, at least a return to the level of The Deep End twelve years ago. It's a lot of fast, chilly, rather sad action -- the sort of thing they do well -- and it fits the material, told all from the point of the little girl, just as Henry James did it but in very modern terms with cell phones and jet lag.

This is a preview. My full review is being held because of the movie's impending theatrical release, which begins May 3. The movie debuted at Toronto last September. From there you may find full reviews by Henry Barnes of the Guardian or John DeFore of Hollywood Reporter.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.