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Thirty-seven year-old Rafi Gardet (Uma Thurman) is on the rebound from a divorce that has left her
emotionally flaky. Needing professional help to get her through the rough period, she tells all to her psychiatrist Lisa Metzger (Meryl Streep), who sincerely tries to ease
her patient's sufferings by constantly giving her sensible advice meant to coach her to love herself.
"Be good to yourself," Lisa tells Rafi, practically pushing her to do away with all inhibitions and go for whatever pleases her in order to bounce back to normal. Until Lisa falls in love with Dave Bloomberg (Bryan Greenberg), a 23-year old man who just won't let her go despite the 14-year age gap. Naturally Lisa gets to know everything about the affair—every lurid detail of it—until it dawns on her that the man is her very own son. Lisa, every inch a Jewish mama, will not take it sitting down.
Prime comes across as a smart and sophisticated movie not because of its plot—for it is obviously contrived—but because of the savvy and finesse its actors have brought into their performances. Meryl Streep leads the pack with her consummate artistry—no one, absolutely no one in Hollywood now could have given the Jewish mother/psychiatrist's role more realism and credibility than Streep—with every tear wiped off in secret, every sigh stifled, every shifting of the glance disguised, Streep is at her best, doing a balancing act between a genuinely caring psychiatrist and an interfering mother. There is good chemistry, too, between Thurman and Greenberg, both of whom can say a lot with their emotive faces.
There is an undercurrent of seriousness in Prime
that is billed as a romantic comedy. Central to the story is the issue of professional ethics. Questions might be asked concerning boundaries between professional concerns and personal anxieties. Should the psychiatrist who obtains details of her son's illicit love affair from her very own patient continue her professional relationship with her? If she stops she would not know of the things (abominable for a dyed-in-the-wool Jewish mother) her son is keeping from her; if she continues she would be betraying her patient who pays her good money for her services. Honesty, whether in personal life or at work, is still the best policy.
(Date Reviewed: 25 November 2005)
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