The Architect

Frank Lloyd Wrong
If family falls and it doesn't make a sound, was anyone there to hear it?

Anthony LaPaglia plays a respected architect in a big city. He seems to have a typical, advantaged life complete with a beautiful wife (Isabelle Rossellini), a sexually blossoming teenage daughter, and a disengaged son who has just dropped out of college. A quite but dedicated mother (Viola Davis) from the projects is on a quest to tear down the buildings she blames for the troubles of her lower-class community. She seeks out the architect to convince him to sign her petition hoping this addition will have weight with the city planners. When the world of the clean-lined, over-educated white family collides with the urban black ghetto world, the building metaphor is sure to come crumbling down.

Yet another brewing dismantling story of families disintegrating is not what the arthouse theater needs. Nothing new is added to this worn out genre. So many films (Unforgiven, Life As a House) use the structure of a home to reflect what is going on around it. It's a bit worn. Dishes get broken, sexual repressions come unleashed, and innocent people suffer. There is a hint of an intersting family story but it resides in the contradicatory world of Viola Davis's character. She has one daughter going nowhere, living at home and letting her mother nurture her fatherless child. Another daughter, in pursuite of a better education and better life, is living away from home with a wealthy family. The daughter is embarassed by her mother yet her mother bears this with a protective and comforting response. Somewhere along her life she's lost a son so you can understand why she's adopted the mothering role for the whole project, regardless of if they wanted her help. Davis gives a wonderfully restrained performance showing maturity and conflict in this limited role. But her story is not enough to keep this house of cards from collapsing.