I’ve been trying to find an accurate, descriptive term for Silver Linings Playbook and the best I can generate is “unconventional love story.”  It isn’t really a comedy, though some of it is pretty funny, and it isn’t really a drama, because some of it is so outrageous.  It’s a David O. Russell film, which means that it doesn’t quite fit into the familiar parameters of Hollywood moviemaking.  Each of his five previous directorial efforts (Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees  and The Fighter) are unusual and offbeat, while boasting deep characters and strong acting.  In that regard, Silver Linings Playbook is no different.

The story follows a young man named Pat (Bradley Cooper) as he leaves a mental institution after eight months of treatment for beating up his estranged wife’s older lover.  Pat moves back in with his parents (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver), trying to find a way to reconnect with the woman whom he is legally prohibited from seeing. Instead, he becomes involved with young dancer Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) who agrees to help him contact his wife, for a price.

Much of the movie seems fresh and original to me.  Hollywood loves troubled, even mentally unbalanced characters, but usually as secondary considerations to stories. It is unusual to find two protagonists so profoundly anti-social and brutally blunt.  This is due to the source material (a novel by Matthew Quick), but most directors would filter its impact or sentimentalize it.  Not Russell.  He loves awkward introductions, inappropriate comments, befuddled bystanders and decidedly intimate conversations between characters who barely know each other.  It isn’t until the final act, after the big bet is agreed to, that Russell finally accedes to conventionality.  Then, the film transforms into a kind of sports movie, concluding with a big, exciting climax.

The film provides meaty roles for Bradley Cooper, who is perfectly convincing as someone who needs medication, and Jennifer Lawrence, who is fast becoming the best actress in Hollywood.  It isn’t realistic that two such normal, troubled people would happen to look like Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, but that is Hollywood’s way.  And to the actors’ credit, it isn’t too distracting.  Some viewers may find the characters so bizarre or different that they cannot relate; I, too, had some difficulty immersing myself into the story.  Yet once I did, I found it amply rewarding, at least until the corny conclusion.  I don’t love the film, but I do feel it is worthy of attention, and possibly some awards.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  3 December 2012.