I have often wondered why, if a great writer dies with a desk holding unproduced screenplays, somebody doesn’t pick out the good stuff and make a movie, staying really faithful to the original script.
Maybe there’s a reason. As proved by the recent “Serious Moonlight,” based on a script by the late Adrienne Shelly, sometimes things got put aside on purpose.
And Shelly was no titan of world literature — but Tennessee Williams was. The author of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Glass Menagerie” left behind an original screenplay dating back to the 1950s, a typically Southern-fried number called “The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond.”
The film has been the pet project of the actress-filmmaker Jodie Markell, who directed it. While we owe her a debt for pursuing the property and bringing it to light, the plain fact is the movie isn’t very good.
Although “Teardrop Diamond” was the only screenplay Williams wrote that wasn’t adapted from one of his plays, it nevertheless has a stagebound feeling about it. Most of the action is set during a grand 1920s party on a single decisive night.
At the center of the action is a typical Williams heroine, Fisher Willow, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Miss Willow can’t conform to the genteel behavior of the other Southern belles in the vicinity; she’s been schooled in gay Paree, and has some sort of wild streak anyway.
The party in question is some kind of socially significant debutante affair and Willow must have an escort. Her reluctant chaperon is Jimmy (Chris Evans), a dubious choice: True, his grandpappy was a governor of Mississippi, but his drunken father has reduced the family to ground-level conditions.
So it’s quite an evening at the ball, capped by the fact that Fisher loses an expensive earring loaned to her by her wealthy aunt (Ann-Margret, briefly). The evening stretches on, encounters are made, feelings are damaged, and in small but significant ways, the courses of a handful of lives are altered.
At least, that’s the idea that Tennessee Williams was pursuing. But the film is so stiff and unevenly acted, so reminiscent of a low-budget TV production, that it doesn’t feature well. It’s like a jewel missing its proper setting.
The usually excellent Bryce Dallas Howard seems at sea here, as though no consensus had gathered about why Fisher Willow moves through the world in her particular way.
Her co-star, Chris Evans, who’s best known for his “Fantastic Four” calisthenics, actually comes across more confidently, as one of Williams’ uncertain males.
There’s a wonderful section during the party where Fisher goes to an upstairs room and has an encounter with an ailing lady, the details of which should be withheld.
The lady is played by Ellen Burstyn, who (though she never gets out of bed) infuses the film with a vibrancy that it otherwise lacks. For a moment, you have a glimpse of how this project might have found its voice.
“The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond” (two stars)
An original, never-produced script by Tennessee Williams looks at a significant evening in the lives of some of Williams’ typically Southern-fried characters. Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Evans work to make it come to life, but the film is too stiff to show off any of Williams’ ideas.
Rated: PG-13 for subject matter
Showing: Uptown
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