Silver Linings Playbook - weird and brilliant

I'm hardly alone in predicting big things for Jennifer Lawrence, but when she appeared as Katniss Everdeen in last year's outstanding near-future science fiction teen thriller Hunger Games and many (including me) lauded her performance - none could have imagined that she would be picking up an Academy Award within 12 months.  To even receive a nomination at the age of 22 was an achievement, to win the award was almost unthinkable.  There are those who might say she is too young to receive such an accolade, and that the Academy should have waited for her to mature as an actress before putting her on such a pedestal.  But we can hardly complain at the Academy recognising pure talent for what it is, rather than waiting for the years to pass before feeling as though it has to give someone an award long after their best work is past them.  Look at how the Academy treated Martin Scorsese.  After ignoring his great works for years they finally awarded him the best director statue for The Departed, simply because it would be unthinkable for one of the signature American directors of his generation to go unrewarded by the Academy.  So why not Lawrence and why not now?

Thus it was that Jennifer Lawrence won the Academy award for Best Actress in 2013 for Silver Linings Playbook.  Lawrence and co-star Bradley Cooper put in outstanding performances as Tiffany and Pat, two people who develop a friendship when Pat is released from a psychiatric hospital and tries to re-integrate himself into the world before reconnecting with his estranged wife Nikki.  The catch here is that both Pat and Tiffany have recently had to (and continue to) deal with their own mental problems.  Pat has a form of Bi-polar disorder that manifests itself as anger when he becomes stressed, he was put into the hospital after he discovered Nikki in the shower with a local teacher and severely beat the man up.  Tiffany's husband has recently died and she has lost her job after sleeping her way around her office, Tiffany reveals that she is a nymphomaniac to Pat but he then spurns her advances.  Later Tiffany agrees to help Pat re-integrate his life into normalcy, so that he can get back together with Nikki.

Now you might think you know where this is going, what the film is going to feel like and how it's going to pan out.  You might be right on some levels, but on others you would be very wrong.  Though on the surface this sounds like something of a chick flick, it's quite far from it.  It's an exceptionally odd and funny film about family, friendship, relationships and social convention.  The film asks questions about society's definition of 'normal', constantly juxtaposing the 'normal' behaviour of Pat's obsessively superstitious and occasionally violent father (played by Robert De Niro) against Pat's own behaviour.  The film is set in Philadelphia and is constantly referencing the fortunes of the Philadelphia Eagles, and how Pat's father is convinced that the behaviour of his son is directly responsible for their form.

At the centre of it all though are the actors.  Cooper and Lawrence are outstanding in conveying the lovestruck bewilderment of each of their characters, as they struggle to work out what the world expects of them while breaking every social convention in the book and not appearing to notice.  After the trash that Cooper broke into the mainstream with (The Hangover, The A Team), who would have though he could have been involved in something this spectacular good?  Not every film that ends with a ballroom dance and a kiss is a trashy chick flick, Silver Linings Playbook is a great modern romance story with interesting characters that says something about what society considers 'normal'.  It's brilliant.