In the Land of Women is a pretty good film.  It could have been a great film. It had electrifying young leads: the warm and charismatic Adam Brody and the fabulous Kristen Stewart [editor’s note: this was before her acting took its dramatic nose dive during the Twilight series.] It had a great story idea: a sensitive and cute-as-hell stud just dumped by his girlfriend skips out on his frustrating life to stay with his grandmother, and becomes emotionally embroiled with the women of the family across the street. Seriously, what could be better? It really should have been an American version of Eric Rohmer’s Conte D’Été. Everything was in place.

Except that Eric Rohmer didn’t write it. If you ever want to appreciate how just how great Eric Rohmer was, a good way to find out is to compare these two very similar films. Land of Women is a nice little film, to be sure. It’s enjoyable, but it lacks all depth; indeed, it never even strives for any depth. The three main characters are never developed beyond their tantalizing initial sketches, and their relationships to each other are strangely skirted around. Instead, the movie busies itself serving up a safe but banal stew of subplots – a Sunday-night-movie cancer subplot, a shallow unrequited teenage love subplot, and a tiresome “young man connects with grandmother” subplot, around which the main characters revolve, occasionally bumping into each other. The film has it all backward, as far as I’m concerned!

The first half of the film is intriguing, mainly because Brody and Stewart have an unusual, almost Rohmeresque chemistry between them, and their story seems to have a lot of possibilities. They are both convincingly lost and self-centered, with Stewart playing her semi-conscious attraction to Brody quite well, and Brody playing his non-specific neediness quite well also. If only Kasdan had written some serious dialog for these two! Instead we are just teased, and then left hanging when the “frustrated mother” plot suddenly takes over the film half-way through, and the “fragile, troubled daughter” plot is summarily dumped. This decision was a shame, because the Brody/Ryan relationship is not nearly as emotionally compelling – I’m not sure if this is a result of Meg Ryan’s lame acting and extraterrestrial appearance, or if the writing in their scenes is simply boring – a bit of both, I think. But with the narrative high ground surrendered, the film mundanely grinds through to its conclusion, having squandered every opportunity that was there for the taking.

There is a third woman in the picture, two of them actually. Brody’s ex-girlfriend is a nothing character. But the younger daughter, who develops a childish crush on Brody, is actually a pretty good character in the beginning, played with warmth and skill by Mekenzie Vega. But then Kasdan can’t think of anything for her to do and she just disappears into the cancer subplot as the “worried daughter.”

In the Land of Women also makes two huge mistakes. The hackneyed comedy associated with the grandmother (Olympia Dukakas) was very distracting and unnecessary – Kasdan just needed the courage not stoop to that kind of device out of fear. And secondly, the casting of Meg Ryan was a really unfortunate decision. Her face should have gotten separate billing over the rest of her, because it has become its own life form. Seriously, she no longer looks like a real person, and in a film like this you simply cannot have that. Plus, she’s not a good enough actress to pull off her role – her breakdown scene is pretty pathetic, for example, and if Adam Brody was not standing opposite her looking young and gorgeous it would have been a disaster.

I enjoyed In the Land of Women for what it was, don’t get me wrong. It’s not a bad film at all. But when such a compelling confluence of story and actors occurs, it’s hard to not be overwhelmed with disappointment when it’s carelessly frittered away.