Sundance 2012: THE END OF LOVE Review

Compelling drama can be drawn out of small, intimate stories, but there comes a point where a story is so humble, so quiet, and so commonplace that there's almost nothing there.  Mark Webber's The End of Love wants to hang its drama on a man coping with the death of his wife and struggling to be a single father, but Webber chooses to have the story live mostly in the moments between a dad and his son.  Webber paints a warm and intimate family portrait but his attempts at any deeper drama outside of the father-son relationship feel out of place against the central and simple family portrait. In addition to dealing with the death of his wife a year ago and struggling to raise his two-year-old son Isaac (Isaac Love), Mark (Webber) is desperately trying to find a job, meet new women, and reclaim a bit of the easy-going days he had before becoming a full-time dad.  That's about as deep as the plot goes and the majority of the story is just the day-to-day of Mark spending time with Isaac.  Even when Mark hangs out with fellow single-parent Lydia (Shannyn Sossamon), much of his time is still spent playing with Isaac. The entire heart of the film is Mark and Isaac, but the audience enters an artificial and predictable void every time Mark goes solo to explore his feelings.  The relationship with Isaac isn't filled with twists and turns, but it doesn't have the self-consciousness of Mark's soul-searching.  Watching Mark ...

Source: http://collider.com/the-end-of-love-review/140289/

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