Samson and Delilah
Written and Directed by Warwick Thornton
Starring Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson
***
I love great dialogue as much as the next critic, but it seems to me that American movies have gotten awfully talky recently, as if too many filmmakers have simply forgotten that age-old aphorism about one image being worth a thousand pithy exchanges. That’s especially true with the recent spate of movie romances—both of the comic and dramatic variety—where the couple that’s meant to be falling in love or that’s already in love talks endlessly at each other about their feelings without ever seeming to share one quiet moment of genuine affection. (I suppose I have to blame my all-time favorite movie, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, for that—Alvy and Annie do talk up a storm in that film, but their conversations are somehow just as intimate and affectionate as silence would be.)