“What I’ve always loved about you, Max…” is a line we hear uttered in Volker Schlondorff’s Return to Montauk – which, unsurprisingly, is a film by an author (the talented Colm Toibin – behind the novel that inspired Brooklyn) about an author. Naturally self-indulgent in parts, the film also suffers from the frustrating trope of having a writer converse with dialogue similar to the words he gets paid to write – rather than talk normally like a normal human being.
Stellan Skarsgard plays Max, embarking on a book tour which leads him to New York City, promoting his latest piece of literature. It’s the city where an old flame resides, and he decides – despite being in a relationship with Clara (Susanne Wolff) – to get back in touch, arriving, uninvited to the workplace of Rebecca (Nina Hoss). Initially she has no intention of seeing him, but as he pleads for her attention, she reluctantly agrees to spend some time, as the pair set off to Montauk. As he hopes to reignite feelings he has neever been able to shake, they both need to establish whether their fling decades earlier was a meaningless endeavour, or whether there is still hope that there could be something between them in the future.
Tonally inconsistent, there are shades of the archetypal romantic comedy to this piece, while at other times it takes on the form of a profound, affecting drama, and a compatible balance is rarely achieved by Schlondorff. Perhaps this is emblematic of the film being based in the States, and the traditional setting of NY, and yet having European protagonists at the heart of the narrative – not quite able to marry up the two contrasting sensibilities to make for a compelling piece of cinema.