UNFINISHED BUSINESS
There is much bravery and perhaps no little self-proclamation in UNFINISHED BUSINESS,
the Viveca Lindfors filmwritten, directed by, and starring herselfthat opens
today (May 29, 1987) at the Public Theater. James Morrison plays her son, Jonathan.
The bravery comes in playing a womanan actress named Helenawho is no longer
young and whose husband has left her. A woman whose beautiful face is now like the beauty
of a finely ploughed field; still very beautiful, but in a different way. A face that is
photographed as much as possible through a soft mesh; but not always (the true bravery).
A further part of the self-exposure is that the Hungarian-playwright husband, Ferenzy, has
left her for a younger womanand he brings the younger woman, also an actress, with
him when he suddenly returns from a long stay of working in Germany.
The movie take place at the "Stockbridge International Theater Festival" which,
years earlier, Helena and Ferenzy had founded together. "He changed my life; I was
just a kooky film star," Helena remembers.
In actual fact, Viveca Lindfors had been a young Swedish film star with George Tabori, her
Hungarian-playwright husband. And for years they ran the Berkshire Drama Festival. Tabori
created the long-running BRECHT ON BRECHT and more specifically the part of The
Jewish Wifefor her, in which she glowingly starred at the Theater de Lys. He also
adopted her son, Kristoffer. And then he left her in 1972 forthe old clippings
saya younger woman.
A solo Lindfors reenacts a passage from BRECHT in the strong opening scenes of her
filmthe scenes reguard the German physicist who ditched his Jewish wife when the
Nazis came inagain relating a theme of abandonment, but in a different way.
Putting this all together, there is a deft touch that comes halfway through UNFINISHED
BUSINESS. Helena is raging at Ferenzy about another of his betrayals of the pastwhen
hed staged BRECHT ON BRECHT in London with her not in it. Into the midst of this
strum und drang there comes the weary voice of Helenas son, Jonathan (James
Morrison). "Knock it off!" he tells his actress mother and playwright
stepfather. "Im so goddamned tired of theatrical moments in my real life."
One wonders whether Kristoffer Tabori, the actor who was lately so stoic and so good in
Simon Grays THE COMMON PURSUIT, ever really was driven to say this. It would be nice
to think so, and it is to the credit of his mother to write it into the first movie she
has ever directed.
That she could do the movie at all is thanks to the Directing Workshop for Women at the
American Film Institute, which seems to have stayed with this borderline-pretentious yet
often touching project for several difficult years.
Peter Donat, who stems from another famous acting family, does a workmanlike job as
Ferenzythough he is manifestly about as Hungarian as I am. Gina Hecht makes a bold
vignette of Ferenzys young German companion, Vickie. Little Hayley Taylor-Block, as
Kristina the granddaughter, does her best to steal the whole movieand very nearly
manages it with the deliciously overacted wail, "Im just a thing to you all,
Im just a thing!" Additional cast includes Anna Devere (Anna), Herriett Guiar
(Cynthia), James Ward (Chauffeur), and Chuck Cochran (Manager). Synopsized from a review
by Jerry Tallmer for the New York Post and a film review for Variety.