New York. Writer Laura suspects her husband Dean is cheating on her during his long business trips to far away locations. They have two kids together. Laura’s father Felix suspects the same, so they go on to secretly trail Dean from a car. On a Mexican trip, Laura confronts Felix for leaving her mom to be with another woman. When it turns out Dean was faithful all along, Laura returns back home.
A gentle, minimalist, albeit a little thin drama about the fear of infidelity, ageing and betrayal told from the female perspective, “On the Rocks” works thanks to director’s Sofia Coppola’s sense for fluent storytelling and melancholy. However, one is left with the impression that a lot more could have been done with it. The initial story on whether the husband is cheating or not quickly becomes a catalyst for something else, the relationship between daughter and her father, Laura and Felix, who are played well by Rashida Jones and Bill Murray. It all comes full circle, in the Mexican resort, where it is finally revealed that all this is not about Laura’s husband, but about her physiological projection, about her father who cheated on her mother, at which point she confronts him into admitting the best monologue of the film: “When your mom and I were first together, she was so amazing, she shone all her light on me. And when you guys came along, all that light went to you two. And when someone looked at me like that again... You know, I wanted that glow again... We all just wanna be loved.” More of these kind of moments would have been welcomed, yet the rest feels often too loose, vague, meandering, when a tighter narrative grip would have been better.
Grade:++
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