Jane resents Antonia’s classy, good looks, her impressive job in publishing, her ordered family life and her easy wealth and good fortune. Or so Jane tells her therapist. Antonia envies Jane’s free-spiritedness, her willingness to embrace new adventures and experiences and her joie de vivre. Or so Antonia tells her therapist. Antonia and Jane are the best of friends, though they would never admit to the other that they harbor these hidden resentments. Only their therapist knows for sure and the funny thing is — they both see the same one. The story unfolds as a series of wry flashbacks as individually told to the confidence-keeping therapist. Antonia and Jane have known each other since early childhood, though now they only see each other once a year at their annual get-together dinners. They also share a man in common, a photographer who was in a relationship with Jane but abruptly abandoned it to marry Antonia and raise a family. Many years later he leaves Antonia too. And thus the resentments build. The basic premise of Antonia & Jane is good; it’s funny, sharp, and telling. But this British film breaks down midway with a series of surreal flights that yank the light-hearted comedy from the land of the sweetly amusing into the forceably zany. It adds an antic quality to the movie that wasn’t there previously and makes it seem as though it’s shifting gears. But, really, it just gets stuck. The absurdist tone makes sense coming from director Kidron, whose previous film, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, took much the same approach (the film shows frequently on the Arts & Entertainment channel). Up until the point where the movie slips into hyperdrive, Antonia & Jane is a pleasant serio-comedy about the friendship between two women and about the unexplored gulf between thought and expression. But it loses the thread and ultimately winds up with a pat concluding shot of Antonia and Jane hugging wordlessly and scuttling the effort to say what they mean. All the while the camera swoops rapturously around them. But instead of sharing their joy, the shot just made me wonder if these two ever really had anything to say to each other.
This article appears in January 17 • 1992 (Cover).
