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Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Selma Blair, Radha Mitchell, Alexa Davalos. Drama. Written by Allison Burnett, Charles Baxter. Directed by Robert Benton.

FILM SYNOPSIS: From venerable, multiple Academy Award winning director Robert Benton (Kramer Vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart), comes a kaleidoscopic ode to life and love. In a coffee shop in a tight-knit Oregon community, local professor Harry Stevenson (Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman) witnesses love and attraction whipping up mischief among the town’s residents. From the unlucky-in-love, die-hard romantic coffee shop owner, Bradley (Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear), who has a serial habit of looking for love in all the wrong places, including with his current wife Kathryn (Selma Blair) who leaves him for a lesbian lover; to the edgy real estate agent Diana (Radha Mitchell), who is caught up in an affair with a married man (Billy Burke) with whom she shares an ineffable connection; to the beautiful young newcomer, Chloe (Alexa Davalos), who defies fate in romancing the troubled Oscar (Toby Hemmingway); to Harry himself, whose adoring wife (Jane Alexander) is looking to break through his walls of grief after the wrenching loss of a beloved son, they all intertwine into one story in which no one can escape being bent, broken, befuddled and ultimately redeemed by love’s inescapable spell.

PREVIEW REVIEW: With its erudite script, masterful directorial detail, and outstanding cast headed by the superb Morgan Freeman, Feast of Love is a potent, hard-hitting tale of love, betrayal and the resilience of the heart. Alas, the “grownup” themes of lesbianism and adultery are handled with even less shyness than the many actors who depict various sexual activities as if they were making an adult video. Indeed, most everybody is seen without clothes and enacting sex in explicit detail.

I was moved by characters dealing with betrayal and the loss of love, as people discover the need for forgiveness, but the abundant sexual activity and the profane language drenched the lessons with a flood of decadent hedonism. Simply put, it is excessive. And once again the new morality is reinforced with depictions of people going to bed with each other on the first date, marriage vows broken with all the guilt of one who constantly runs red lights, and spiritual “insights” often falling outside biblical teaching.

Distributor: MGM