Heartburn

Given that it was written by Nora Ephron who would go on to write the classic mature age rom-com When Harry Met Sally Heartburn is a surprisingly tepid film, not realistic enough to work as an account of marital breakdown, not zesty enough to  work as entertainment.

A  fictionalized account of Ephron's own marriage to Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, the story concerns Rachel (Meryl Streep), a New York food writer, and Mark (Jack Nicholson), a Washington political columnist.  Nicholson obliges fans with some eyebrow work and tantrums but his performance amounts to nothing more than excerpts from his standard shtick as his character is too sketchily drawn to work as the portrait of a philanderer.  Rachel is supposed to be a sympathetic character, the woman deceived, but as Streep plays her she is shrill and pedestrian, arguably enough to drive anyone to look elsewhere. Perhaps Ephron stopped well short of the facts but with what she's given him Nichols fails to create any sustained sense of a marriage and the saga unfolds mechanically without palpable emotional affect.

There are moments of charm but as a whole Heartburn is inadequate to it title. Mercifully it does not opt for a sappy Hollywood ending thus saving it from the land of the entirely forgettable .

 

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