Movie Review: The Shape of Things

The Shape of Things (2003) 

Directed by Neil LaBute

Written by Neil LaBute 

Starring Paul Rudd, Gretchen Mol, Frederick Weller, Rachel Weisz 

Release Date May 9th, 2003 

Published May 8th, 2003 

Writer/Director Neil LaBute could teach a master’s class in cruelty. In his first film, In The Company Of Men, LaBute had two male characters inflict all sorts of emotional torture on a blind woman until one of the men destroyed the other. Then in Your Friends and Neighbors, he poured all of his sadistic rage into one character, Jason Patric's fearsome Cary, and wielded the character as a tool to inflict cruelty on the rest of the cast. After a brief respite in mainstream filmmaking, LaBute returned to his roots for The Shape of Things, a caustic lesson in male-female relationships in stark contrast to the usual romantic observations of conventional Hollywood.

Paul Rudd stars as Adam, a timid, nerdy museum worker who while finishing his shift one day encounters a woman who has crawled over the velvet rope surrounding an almost nude statue. Her name is Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), her intent is to deface the statue with spray paint, and she dares Adam to stop her. At the same time, she is flirting heavily, keeping the painfully shy Adam off balance to the point that he walks away allowing her to finish the job on the statue.

Evelyn was nice enough to give Adam her number and the two begin dating. Shoot ahead a few weeks and Adam and Evelyn are attending a play where she will meet his two closest friends, Jen (Gretchen Mol) and Phillip (Frederick Weller), a soon to be married couple. She is meeting them for the first time and she hopes they will notice how she has changed him. Adam has lost weight and is acting very different from the shy nerd the couple has always known.

There are more changes, Adam is dressing better, his hair is styled and eventually he goes so far as to get a nose job. He's also acting different as when he and Jen share a stolen kiss in the park. All of it aided and abetted by Evelyn's manipulations until an emotional finish that is shocking and devastating in ways you could never predict.

This is familiar ground for Neil LaBute yet he still manages to surprise and shock. Like David Mamet, John Sayles or Kevin Smith, LaBute is the rare screenwriter with his own very distinctive voice. Labute's dialogue is wrapped in the same barbed wire as Mamet but without having to serve any sort of conventional plot. Words fall like blows from LaBute’s characters and the emotional warfare is as devastating as any bullet.

LaBute also has a terrific ear for music, employing the brilliant Elvis Costello for both score and storytelling device. Fans of Costello should take note of each song they recognize and where it is placed in the film. This is especially attention grabbing on a second viewing when you know what is to come next.

The main problems of the film stem from lead Paul Rudd who overplays some of Adam's nerd tendencies. Watch in the park scene with Gretchen Mol his Urkel-esque acting style that plays throughout most of the film. By the end he comes around enough to contribute to the film’s painful finale but his performance early on stands out as the film’s weakest point.

Some might find the film’s ending to be far fetched but if you give in to the characters and invest yourself in LaBute’s dialogue, you should be able to forgive him his over the top demonstrations. The Shape Of Things is an astounding observation of the kind cruelty that only intimacy can reap. Only someone who you invest your emotions in fully can hurt you this bad. The film may take that last point to an extreme but it's a mighty powerful and shocking extreme that does not come easy.