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SECOND VOWS - AND FIRST ONES ACTRESS ALICE KRIGE SEES PARALLELS BETWEEN HER LIFE AND THE THEMES OF HER NEW FILM, "SEE YOU IN THE MORNING." Author: Desmond Ryan Two weeks after she completed shooting Alan Pakula's See You in the Morning, a deft dissection of all the things that can go wrong in a second marriage, Alice Krige got married for the first time. "I suppose it's a sort of declaration of faith," she said with a rueful grin. "We had been together for eight years before that. But the movie was actually close to my own experience in what it says about never taking anything in a relationship or granted and trying to find a balance so that both people's needs are met." The 34-year-old Krige, who has the haughty beauty of a young Katharine Hepburn, believes that moviegoers should view See You in the Morning for its uniqueness as much as for its inherent quality. Although separations and broken marriages are a perennial Hollywood staple, the children of divorce - now an increasingly fashionable topic in the news media - are rarely more than ciphers in movies. When they are included at all, it's usually as a convenient emotional crutch for one of the parents or simply as an afterthought. See You in the Morning - much like Shoot the Moon (1982) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) - is a lot closer to the real world. Krige's Beth Goodwin is the mother of two kids (played by Drew Barrymore and Lukas Haas). After her concert-pianist husband (David Dukes) commits suicide, she meets and marries Manhattan psychologist Larry Livingstone (Jeff Bridges), a vulnerable refugee from a failed first marriage. For both, love is harder the second time around because each has to cope with the confused, sometimes bitter, responses of their kids. "Given that it's such a common experience now, you'd think there would be a lot more films made about it," suggested Krige during an interview at the Latham Hotel. "My mother is a psychologist, and I always send her my scripts before the movie starts. She thought this one was wise and wonderful. The children of divorce so often think it's somehow their fault and that in some way they are responsible for what happened. The way Alan gives space to the kids and their feelings in the movie is something very rare. Kids can be very clear about their feelings when they're in the middle of something like that." Krige, who was born in South Africa, cherishes memories of a cheerful and undisturbed childhood. "(But) although I come from a large, stable and happy family, I found it very easy to imagine what it would be like if one's parents had parted," she said thoughtfully. "It must be a truly shattering thing because you have this enormous trust in two people - it's the only thing you have at that age. "Then they say, 'Sorry, it's not working out,' (and) the implicit message to the child is 'You're not good enough.' It is truly frightening to lose the core of your existence when you're that little. If it happens to your parents, then you begin to feel why should anyone love anyone?" Pakula entwines his film around the two families. Jo Livingstone (Farrah Fawcett) divorces Larry and remarries. Larry's relationship with Beth, the focus of the movie, is encumbered by the guilt and anguish both Beth and her children feel about the suicide. A compulsive supermother who is also trying to sustain a career as a photographer, Beth finds that the demands of being a parent and responsive lover a constant source of friction. For his part, Larry thinks of himself as a stranger in another man's house. "She's always sacrificed her own needs," said Krige, who moved to London when she was 22 and did Shakespeare and a range of television and stage roles after her screen debut in Chariots of Fire in 1981. Her other films include Ghost Story (1981) and King David (1985). "In the course of the picture, she takes two steps forward and four steps back until she finally stops beating herself over the head and setting impossible standards and goals for herself. It's a halting, faltering journey." Pakula brings a light touch to scenes that could have been bleak in clumsier hands, and Krige attributes that to his thorough methods and unusual rules. The cast assembled at the Astoria Studio in Queens and spent a very generous four weeks in rehearsal. "We talked about ourselves and the way things in our own lives intersected with the script and the characters," Krige recalled. "I've never done that for a movie before. Alan listened, and what he did was wrap what we had to offer around the characters." The director also insisted that Krige and Fawcett not socialize during the 14 weeks of shooting - even though the two wives are not really antagonists in the film. "I only met Farrah a couple of times (during the filming), and that was a real pity because she seems such a warm, vibrant woman," said Krige. "But Alan thought that even though there is no animosity between them, they are unknowns to each other and if we kept it that way we could use it as a stimulus. He was right." He also kept something else from Krige that she didn't discover until she went to the first screening of See You in the Morning. In the final week of shooting, after Krige had finished her work on the movie, Pakula filmed an impromptu scene between Larry and his young daughter. "It's the sequence on the pier where she says, 'If you can fall out of love with Mommy, why can't you fall out of love with Beth (and come back)?' It would tear my heart out if a child said that to me. They really know how to touch the vulnerable spots." So, too, does Pakula. "Alan's a compassionate man," said Krige. "He looks at people with affection and humor, and he gets them looking at things that maybe they didn't really want to look at." April 23, 1989 Copyright (c) 1989, 2007 - The Philadelphia Inquirer |
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