Return to Me

USA 2000

Reviewed by Kay Dickinson

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Chicago, two years ago. Driving home from a charity dinner with husband Bob, Elizabeth Rueland is killed in a car crash. Her heart is transplanted into a woman called Grace. A year later, Bob is reluctantly persuaded by his friend Charlie to go on a double date. They dine at O'Reilly's, an Irish-Italian restaurant co-owned by Grace's grandfather. Bob quickly realises that he dislikes his date Marsha and has more rapport with their waitress, Grace. He leaves early, forgetting to take his mobile phone. When he returns to pick it up, he asks Grace on a date.

The romance blossoms. Grace is nervous about consummating their relationship because she is ashamed of her surgical scars. On the night she has chosen to explain her medical history to Bob, she stumbles across a letter she anonymously sent him via an agency to thank him for his wife's organ donation. She leaves without explanation. The following day, Grace tells him she has Elizabeth's heart. He leaves her and she flies to Italy for a painting holiday. Before long,

Chicago, two years ago. Driving home from a charity dinner with husband Bob, Elizabeth Rueland is killed in a car crash. Her heart is transplanted into a woman called Grace. A year later, Bob is reluctantly persuaded by his friend Charlie to go on a double date. They dine at O'Reilly's, an Irish-Italian restaurant co-owned by Grace's grandfather. Bob quickly realises that he dislikes his date Marsha and has more rapport with their waitress, Grace. He leaves early, forgetting to take his mobile phone. When he returns to pick it up, he asks Grace on a date.

The romance blossoms. Grace is nervous about consummating their relationship because she is ashamed of her surgical scars. On the night she has chosen to explain her medical history to Bob, she stumbles across a letter she anonymously sent him via an agency to thank him for his wife's organ donation. She leaves without explanation. The following day, Grace tells him she has Elizabeth's heart. He leaves her and she flies to Italy for a painting holiday. Before long, he makes the journey to Europe and successfully wins her back.

he makes the journey to Europe and successfully wins her back.

Review

With its big-band theme song (the same as the film's title), the sudden death of Bob's beloved wife, an operation in which her heart is transplanted into the sickly Grace, and its grief-stricken leading man, you don't need to be an aficionado of romantic comedies to recognise the generic world to which Return to Me belongs. Having established her debt to such films as Sleepless in Seattle and Moonstruck in the first 15 minutes, debut director Bonnie Hunt doesn't offer any great surprises - the film builds to a happy-ever-after finale which inevitably requires Grace's newly acquired palpitating muscle to do a whole lot more than pump blood from A to B. But it does offer a share of incidental pleasures along the way.

As with so many romantic comedies, it's the script (co-written by Hunt and Don Lake) which really carries the film, dexterously balanced between the cloying sentiment of, say, Stepmom - which similarly dealt with grief and romance in US suburbia - and the all-too-easy cynicism of such recent films as Happiness and Your Friends & Neighbors. That said, there are some rather syrupy slow-motion flashbacks to Elizabeth, whose death prompts the family dog to pine for her by the door in the hope that she'll return. The film's central hangout, the Irish-Italian restaurant O'Reilly's, also houses a cringe-worthy roster of characters from both The Quiet Man school of Irishness and television pizza commercials. Thankfully Grace (played by Minnie Driver) is on hand to sprinkle a fair few spicy wisecracks around this otherwise characterless milieu. But the film's liveliest moments are more reliably provided by Grace's tender-yet-cynical friends Joe (Chicago personified, Jim Belushi), Megan (Grace's confidante, played by Hunt herself) and their Catholic families whom they both vainly try to protect from their cursing and canoodling.

Even the undercharged charisma of David Duchovny as Bob is well cushioned by the film's refreshingly zesty script. "It's like a garden!" he gasps with impressive observational skill as he takes stock of Grace's garden, before collapsing into everyone's worst nightmare of flirting ineptitude. He similarly bolts the door on any pity we might feel for him when Grace confronts him with the truth about her surgery: "Phew, I thought you were going to tell me you used to be a man!" he exclaims with relief. Duchovny doesn't quite get away with more demanding emotions such as grief or frustrated wrath, but thanks to the kindly script and some deft, sensitive direction these shortcomings manage to pass themselves off as assets. As Richard Gere admirably demonstrated in Pretty Woman, a clever romantic comedy can turn stiffness (and a pair of endearingly squinty eyes) to its advantage. In Return to Me, Duchovny's actorly range - a weakness in most other films - exudes coy slightness rather than limitation. Whether he's playing awkward or is simply being awkward hardly matters here.

Credits

Director

Bonnie Hunt

Producer

Jennie Lew Tugend

Screenplay

Bonnie Hunt

Don Lake

Story

Bonnie Hunt

Don Lake

Andrew Stern

Samantha Goodman

Director of Photography

Laszlo Kovacs

Editor

Garth Craven

Production Designer

Brent Thomas

Music/Music Conductor/ Orchestrations

Nicholas Pike

©Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.

Production Companies

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures presents a JLT production

Executive Producers

C.O. Erickson

Melanie Greene

Production Supervisor

Rome Unit:

Sergio Ladera

Production Co-ordinator

Cindy Hochman Price

Unit Production Manager

C.O. Erickson

Unit Manager, Rome

Antonio Bruno

Location Manager

James McAllister

Assistant Directors

Artist Robinson

Deanna Stadler-Jones

Don Julien

Rome Unit:

Stefania Nicosia

Script Supervisor

Jeanne Byrd Hall

Casting

Mali Finn

Loop Group:

Mickie McGowan

Associate:

Emily Schweber

Chicago:

Jane Alderman

Chicago Associate:

Catherine Head

Camera Operators

George Kohut

Gerrit Dangremond

Rome Unit Cameraman

Marco Carosi

Hi-definition Video

Post Group

Visual Effects

The Digital Film Group - The Post Group

Special Effects

Co-ordinator:

Rodman Kiser

Foreman:

Mark Hogan

Graphics Designer

Andrew Charles

Art Directors

Dave Krummel

Rome Unit:

Alessandro Orlandi

Lead Set Designer

Craig Jackson

Set Designer

Kerry Sanders

Set Decorator

Daniel Clancy

Watercolor Artist

Bill Bartlet

Costume Designer

Lis Bothwell

Key Make-up

Ron Berkeley

Make-up

Chip D. Williams

Rome Unit:

Gilberto Provenghi

Hair Stylists

Key:

Janis Clark

Linda R. Rizzuto

Rome Unit:

Maurizio Lupi

Main/End Titles Design

Nina Saxon/New Wave Entertainment

Titles/Opticals

Howard Anderson Company

Trumpet Solo

Warren Luening

Singers

Bobbi Page

Terry Wood

Executive Music Producer

Joel Sill

Music Co-ordinator

Marylou Eales

Music Editor

Michael Jay

Orchestral Music Recordist/Mixer

Dan Wallin

Big Band Recordist/Mixer

Allen Sides

Soundtrack

"Return to Me" - (1) Dean Martin, (2) Joey Gian; "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", "Here I Am", "What If I Loved You" - Joey Gian; "Angel Standing By" - Jewel; "The Best Is Yet to Come", "It's Such a Happy Day", "Tenderly" - The Jackie Gleason Orchestra; "Buona Sera", "Good Mornin' Life" - Dean Martin; "Maria Mari", "Danny Boy", "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", "O sole mio" - the Rudy Gabor Strolling Strings; "But Not for Me", "Someone to Watch Over Me" - Benny Carter and his Orchestra; "Where or When" - the Shepheard's Hotel Jazz Orchestra; "I Second That Emotion" - Smokey Robinson and The Miracles; "At Long Last Love" - Frank Sinatra; "Soon"; "Torna a Surriento"

Production Sound Recorder

Scott D. Smith

Sound Engineer

Rome Unit:

Vittorio Melloni

Re-recording Mixers

Matthew Iadarola

Gary Gegan

Recordist

Robert Zubia

Supervising Sound Editor

Robert Grieve

Dialogue Editor

Gastón Biraben

Effects Editor

Odin Benitez

ADR

Recordist:

Diane Lucas

Mixer:

Greg Steele

Supervising Editor:

Avram D. Gold

Editor:

Joan Giammarco

Foley

Supervisor:

Steve Copley

Artist:

John Sievert

Stunt Co-ordinator

Rick LeFevour

Animal Trainers

Stacy Basil

Mark A. Echevarria

Helicopter Pilot

Dirk Vahle

Cast

David Duchovny

Bob Rueland

Minnie Driver

Grace Briggs

Carroll O'Connor

Marty O'Reilly

Robert Loggia

Angelo Pardipillo

Bonnie Hunt

Megan Dayton

David Alan Grier

Charlie Johnson

Joely Richardson

Elizabeth Rueland

Eddie Jones

Emmett McFadden

James Belushi

Joe Dayton

Marianne Muellerleile

Sophie

William Bronder

Wally Jatczak

Brian Howe

Mike

Chris Barnes

Jeff

Adam Tanguay

Adam Dayton

Karson Pound

Karson Dayton

Tyler Spitzer

Tyler Dayton

Laura Larsen

Laura Dayton

Austin Samuel Hibbs

Austin Dayton

Dick Cusack

Mr Bennington

Joey Gian

singer

Tom Virtue

Doctor Senderak

Holly Biniak

big hair

Tamara Tungate

Celia

Kevin Hunt

ER doctor

Tom Senderak

Jennie Lew Tugend

paramedics

David Pasquesi

Tony

Claire Lake

ER nurse

Carol Hunt

Nurse Alice

Patrick Hunt

Danny

Lindsay Allen

delivery girl

Don Lake

transplant man

Holly Wortell

Marsha

Becky Veduccio

Shari

Peter B. Spector

valet guy

Darryl Warren

Father Rudy

Rudy Gabor

William Zirko

Edward Ballog

Angelo Ricco

Italian singers

Alice Hunt

Nancy

Franklin E. Jones

Chester

Tom Hunt

Tom

Jack Cooper

ballroom bartender

Tim O'Malley

Patrick

LaTaunya Bounds

zebra girl

Harry Teinowitz

ice cream clerk

Walt Jacobs

MC

Alan Gresik's Swing Shift Orchestra

The AG Orchestra

Romano Ghini

cappuccino man

Gabriella Arena

Paola Sebastiani

Lilliana Vitale

nuns

Certificate

PG

Distributor

United International Pictures (UK) Ltd

10,444 feet

116 minutes 3 seconds

Digital DTS Sound/DTS Stereo

Colour by

DeLuxe