I’m going on record as saying that I’m not a fan of Jennifer Lawrence. I liked her in Winter’s Bone and I liked mother! despite her, but that’s it. To make things worse, I’ve actively hated Bradley Cooper since day one. If memory serves me, I first saw him in The Hangover (which I disliked immensely), and it’s been downhill ever since. Inexplicably – for me anyway – critics seem to like when these two share the screen. I don’t get it. Serena didn’t fare much of a chance from me, I’ll admit, but it was worse than I thought it would be. Even if it was filled to the brim with a dream cast, the script and direction would have sunk in anyway. It’s a mess, and quite frankly, a waste of time.
I imagine director Susanne Bier and writer Christopher Kyle (based on the book by Ron Rash) started out with some lofty “modern-day” Macbeth pipe dreams about what they were about to produce. Lawrence plays the titular character Serena, a young woman who, for some reason, falls immediately in love with a smarmy business tycoon named Pemberton (Cooper). To say their romance is a whirlwind would imply that some kind of force is depicted. It’s not. He rides up to her on a horse, says something like “Let’s get married,” and then they’re married. Their entire romantic set-up takes up less screen time than the time it took you to read my description of it.
Their love is meant to be deep and passionate, but their chemistry is a dead fish. They sort of mumble around each other, making promises for the future and threats to anyone who would dare come between them. Their dialogue is better suited for a high school rom-com. Adding to this, Serena’s motivations are completely void of substance. A backstory beyond “my family died in a fire” might help this, but none is ever given. By the second half of the film she’s clearly unhinged, but why? I don’t always need plots to be completely tidy, but there’s a severe disconnect here. The character of Serena makes no sense without some form of context, and Serena the film doesn’t either.
Then there’s the husband. Between his insistence on killing the last panther left in the area and logging the entire mountain in a scorched Earth-style blitzkrieg, there isn’t much to hold on to in the way of sympathy. At times it would seem we’re supposed to liken Pemberton to a Charles Foster Kane type character, but if this is true, it’s woefully unsuccessful. Are we to admire his business acumen? His willingness to grab the American dream by the throat and choke the life out of it? Are we supposed to relate to him when he inevitably loses everything? If we are, I don’t. To be a C.F. Kane you have to start with a soul, and then lose it over time. Pemberton has no soul to begin with. He’s blank, and so is his portrayal.
It’s too bad, too. There might be a story worth telling somewhere within Serena. If so, it’s missing. What Bier has crafted could have been something of worth with a bit more effort and finesse. She’s not a bad director, but she made a bad film. There is some style hidden in the corners of Serena, but not nearly enough to keep it afloat. Plot holes and abandoned sub-stories are common (I thought the eagle would be of more significance, for example, but it disappears as fast as it’s introduced). I found myself frustrated, and that’s not a good place for an audience to be. The one thing that held my attention was the local Western North Carolina setting. Our mountains here are beautiful, picturesque, and expansive. But wait, never mind – the movie was shot in Czechoslovakia. So much for that.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.