Clive Owen’s Jack Marcus is a published poet long on laurels and currently short on inspiration. He’s settled for cocooning his creativity in teaching English at Croydon, at an elite New England prep school. Helping to further douse his creative juices is his penchant for imbibing and becoming an embarrassing drunk. Yet we see his creative inner child bubble to the surface in word games he plays with his fellow teachers.
Helping to shift Jack’s creative life out of idle is Dina Delsanto (Juliette Binoche). Strong willed, opinionated and independent, she makes an unconventional entrance as an Italian-born figurative abstract painter and Croyden’s newest faculty member. Suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, “the Icicle,” as she is known by her past colleagues, initially lives up to her name as she chides her students and Jack with the same standoffish wit.
The intellectual sparing between Jack and Dina is fun to watch as they battle over the supremacy of words vs. pictures. The battle takes on mega proportions as the two teachers enlist their respective students to take part in a school competition for the winning medium. When Jack’s boozing threatens to cost him his job, and he damages Dina’s abstract painting in a drunken stupor, the movie’s big downer has us wondering if Jack is truly finished.
There is one moment where Words and Pictures takes on the familiar Dead Poet’s Society mantra of molding students—but it’s not one of Jack’s students, but Dina’s. Through a bit of tough-love guidance, Dina forces her protégé (Valerie Tian) to elevate her talent to a new level.
Words and Pictures succeeds in drawing us in with its lead performers, but the story could have more fully exploited their talents by delving deeper into the lives of these two flawed characters.
Alex A. Kecskes is a published author of "Healer a Novel" and "The Search for Dr. Noble"—both now available on Amazon. He has written hundreds of film reviews and celebrity interviews for a wide variety of online and print outlets. He has covered red carpet premieres and Comic-Con events for major films and independent releases.
