Word: leven
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Perhaps his sweet tooth does not extend to the syrupy script. Writer and director Leven, a psychotherapist who spent time on the Harvard faculty, was not expecting this acting trinity to descend upon his humble screenplay and is simply unprepared to handle such an awesome burden on his first stint as a director...
Sentiments like, "Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life," make the film at times eerily reminiscent of "Saturday Night Live's" "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handy. 'Don Juan de Marco" kills itself with kitschy sweetness in an effort to create precious moments. And Leven's concept of Don Juan as a modern model of the seducer raises some interesting questions about his understanding of the realities of contemporary sexual promiscuity...
...Leven, however, has captured the problems of forming a traditional family in our time. Don Juan has lost his mother and forms a kind of surrogate dysfunctional family with Jack and his wife. His real parents are, of course more exotic. Through his sessions with Jack, we discover that Don Juan's father was an Italian-American "dance king" from Queens, New York who emigrated to Mexico with his son. "Don Juan" isn't smart enough to satirize this colorful background, as "Strictly Ballroom" did so brilliantly. Instead, Don Juan, with his mixed Italian, Spanish, Mexican and American ancestry...
...Leven treats his potentially satirical material with a rare light hand when someone refers to the young lover as Casanova. With his fiery temper, Don Juan becomes incensed. Unfortunately, both Leven and Depp take their mission too seriously to create more of these moments...
...ultimately only as complex and interesting as his interpreters make him. Igmar Bergman's "The Devil's Eye" drew us in, contextualizing Don Juan in a play within a movie. Byron's unfinished satire of the Romantic hero endlessly absorbs. Mozart created complex rhythms in music and character. Leven constructs a stock male stud from Hollywood's image repository...