Gus Van Sant's latest film looks very much like a job he took on as a hired hand rather than his own project.
It stars Mia Wasikowska as Annabel, a young cancer patient on the loose from the treatment room.
Henry Hopper, son of the late Dennis, plays Enoch, a withdrawn young man whose parents have recently died in an accident. There is another leading character called Hiroshi (Ryo Kase), the ghost of a Japanese kamikaze fighter pilot whom only Enoch can see. He tells the depressed youth to buck up. But it's the life-loving girl who leads him towards sanity, even as her own fatal illness progresses.
Restless has a screenplay that posits, not very originally, that death is inevitable but love goes on for ever. A hopeful whimsy is the order of the day. Van Sant directs with as much human sympathy as he can muster. But the whole is fairly anodyne stuff, despite sincere performances from Wasikowska and Hopper.
Restless
