Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Rhys Ifans
Director: Susanne Bier
Running time: 109 mins
Rating: M (violence, sex scenes)
Verdict: Uneven pacing makes this a struggle
Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's Depression-era drama, based on the book by Ron Rash, is a bleak and rather ponderous exploration of a marriage set in the stunning forests of North Carolina in 1929.
Bier gives these characters a look from the Golden Age of cinema, throws them in the chilly and remote atmosphere of Cold Mountain, and then lets rip with the melodrama. It's a difficult mix to balance, and the fact Serena was shot in early 2012 and is being released now suggests there were issues in the editing room.
Bradley Cooper stars as George Pemberton, a logging baron struggling to keep his business going as the country slips into a recession. He falls for the mysterious Serena (Lawrence), to whom his first words are, "I think we should be married." Serena is an independent and outspoken woman who happily returns to her husband's base in North Carolina, where she helps run the company and accepts her husband's past discretions, including one young girl at the camp carrying his child. For his part, it's clear George is taken with his intelligent, smart and sexy wife.
The cracks, however, slowly appear in Serena's cool and capable facade and the film suddenly turns into a lite psychological thriller when a tragic event sends Serena into femme fatale mode. Unfortunately, at this point you realise the film is half over and not much has happened. When we've finally got to the point of the story, the marriage's messy disintegration, it's almost too late to get involved. It's not helped by a continued lack of intensity, despite an increase in melodrama and a number of murders in the small community.
