The Butcher's Wife

A genial fantasy about fated love, The Butcher's Wife starts rather improbably. One day, Marina -- a free-spirited clairvoyant (Moore) living on an island off the Carolinas -- sees a fishing boat run aground. Because destiny has portended the arrival of a husband, she greets the unsuspecting fisherman (Dzundza) with kisses and a marriage proposal. His name is Leo, a Greenwich Village butcher who's overwhelmed by his good fortune but nevertheless puzzled by his young, beautiful bride's belief that their union was preordained. Once back in the Big Apple, the simple but wise Marina turns the neighborhood on its head as she beguiles the most jaded of New Yorkers with her romantic premonitions and intuitions. Although it could have turned out embarrassingly silly, The Butcher's Wife works like magic most of the time, that is if you believe that hope springs eternal in matters of love. There's an interesting subtext at work here in the romantic tug-of-war between Marina and the neighborhood psychiatrist (Daniels) who's intellectually aghast at the effect she's having on his girlfriend, friends, and patients. It's a case of jealousy, both professional and personal: he's a rationalist with a psychiatric buzzword for everything and can't comprehend the irrational power this unsophisticated woman possesses, especially on him. There's also a nice fairy-tale feeling to The Butcher's Wife, down to its depiction of a kinder, gentler New York City that could only exist in a fantasy. The cast is wonderful. Moore has taken some critical slamming in her short career, but her guileless, heartfelt performance in The Butcher's Wife is a big reason why the movie works, even if her blond dye job doesn't. (When she makes one of her predictions, it seems eerily second nature to her.) Daniels is funny as he falls apart at the seams -- he makes a great straight man to the movie's lighthearted supernaturalism -- and Colin, Revlich, McDormand, and Steenburgen are highly watchable as they fall under the spell of the butcher's wife. Like those characters, you too will be charmed by The Butcher's Wife, but only if you allow it to do so. Any hint of a doubt in its premise, and you're likely to think it a fraud.