Don Juan DeMarco
(1995)
comedy drama
directed
by : Jeremy Leven
featuring
: Marlon Brando - Johnny Depp - Faye Dunaway - Geraldine Palhas - Bob Dishy
running
time : 1 hour 30 minutes
A psychiatrist treats a most unusual patient,
only to find that the doctor is the one who gains the most from their sessions
in this philosophical romantic comedy. A young man in a mask and cape (Johnny
Depp) is standing atop a billboard, threatening to jump. When the potential
suicide is finally talked down, he's brought to a psychiatric facility
where after one doctor washes his hands of the case, he's placed under
the supervision of Dr. Jack Mickler (Marlon Brando), an aging psychiatrist
soon to retire. The patient informs Mickler that he is actually the great
lover Don Juan, who has seduced over 1,500 women, but has fallen into a
deep depression after being unable to win the hand of the woman of his
dreams. Mickler has ten days to work with "Don Juan," after which he will
either be released on medication or committed to a long-term stay in a
mental hospital. As Mickler talks with the young man, who speaks rapturously
of the art of love, the doctor finds that his philosophies are helping
to kick start his failing relationship with his wife (Faye Dunaway), and
he slowly becomes convinced that his patient might really be Don Juan after
all. Don Juan DeMarco's theme song, "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman,"
became a major hit for singer and songwriter Bryan Adams; after working
with Brando on this film, Depp cast the legendary actor in a key supporting
role in his directorial debut, The Brave.
When dealing with psychological
disorders in film, it's a fine line indeed between whimsical and preposterous.
Think how absurd a film like Rain Man could have been in less capable hands.
Screenwriter and director Jeremy Leven has a particular problem with recognizing
the border between the engagingly offbeat and the fatuous, as his scripts
for Creator and The Legend Of Bagger Vance clearly demonstrate, seesawing
wildly as they do from one tone to another, frustrating in their sheer
first-draftness. Leven's directorial debut Don Juan DeMarco is not enough
of an exception, but the comedy-drama admirably generates enough charm
to make a convincing argument that the writer/director should get behind
the camera for more of his own scripts. Many of the film's plot developments
are as patently balmy as its central character, but leads Depp and Brando
seem to be having such a good time that one would have to be a major sourpuss
to care. Pacing, music, Depp's vanity, the oddball flirtations between
Brando and Dunaway, and especially the writer/director's central assertion
that nothing is more flat-out nuts than love, all combine to make an entertaining
diversion aimed squarely at the non-cynic. Leven's film is told with such
peppery gusto that it ends up being the artistic equivalent of the family
black sheep: a bit of a pill, a tax upon one's intellectual patience at
times, but ultimately too truthful and too much jovial fun to dislike.