Third Person’s considerable strengths generally come from the actors. The connections between these characters are are sometimes ludicrously melodramatic and overcalculated, but they’re at least drawn with a strong sense for the many ways people who make emotional commitments can get rapidly pulled far past their comfort zones. And Julia and Rick’s profound tension over Sam culminates in a brutal betrayal of trust-one inspired by an earlier, equally brutal one. Sean is far more willing to expose his vulnerabilities (and his open sexual interest) to Monika, but they’re driven apart by the man holding her daughter, who keeps upping his payoff demand, sensing Sean is a fat American sheep he can fleece.
They’re like screwball characters, playing with each other via fast banter and comic put-downs, except that they both seem on the edge of real malice much of the time, and neither one wants to drop the façade enough to show any weakness or vulnerability. Even before Anna’s other lover arrives to muddy the waters, their aggression with each other is painful, exaggerated past belief, but still compelling. Michael and Anna’s relationship is 90 percent cruel, heartless sparring and 10 percent sex. The thematic link between all of Third Person’s sparring couples is the question of trust, especially when a key third person enters the mix. And in New York City, lawyer Theresa (Maria Bello) is exasperated with her irresponsible client Julia (Mila Kunis), who keeps botching important stages in her attempt to gain access to her son, who’s living with her rich artist ex-husband Rick (James Franco) and his lover Sam (Loan Chabanol). Meanwhile, in Rome, sleazy American corporate spy Sean (Adrien Brody) meets mournful young Romanian mother Monika (Moran Atias), and gets involved in her attempts to buy her 8-year-old daughter back from the thug who’s smuggled her into the country. Famous author Michael (Liam Neeson) anchors one story from his luxurious Paris hotel, where he’s abandoned his wife Elaine (Kim Basinger) to frolic with his lover/protégé Anna (Olivia Wilde) while he works on his newest novel.
Best Picture-winner Crash, Third Person presents itself as an everything-is-connected movie in the Short Cuts or Amores Perros vein, with different stories taking place in different places, all linked by a thin connective thread. In that sense, Third Person feels like an overly lengthy shaggy-dog joke with a worthwhile build-up and a questionable payoff. But he doesn’t let them any further in until the final moments, which seem guaranteed to send people away furious, astonished, or just plain confused. Haggis tips the audience off that something is going on. The film takes these magical occurrences at face value, without comment, such that it’s easy to miss the geographical discrepancies-or lose track of the storyline while trying to figure out what they mean. A motorcycle rider, a car passenger, and a painting all seem to have similarly blurred international boundaries. Flowers left in Paris are found in New York. A note hastily scrawled on a notepad in a New York hotel is picked up by a character seemingly in the same hotel-even though it’s already been established that her hotel is in Paris. There are a few subtle clues throughout Paul Haggis’ Third Person that not everything is as it appears to be.