Oscar-winning Danish director Susanne Bier filmed this tale of Depression-era love and death before Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle made Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence cinema’s hottest screen pairing. Since then, Serena has languished in post-production limbo, Bier spending 18 months in the editing room with unsurprisingly conflicted results. While Ron Rash’s Smoky Mountains source novel is a tale of savage greed rooted in the tough world of Appalachian loggers, the finished film tends more toward ripe romantic melodrama, sidestepping the rich communal texture that one suspects first attracted Bier’s attention after original director Darren Aronofsky stepped aside.
Bradley Cooper lacks dirt under his fingernails as George Pemberton, the owner of a timber business voraciously deforesting an area earmarked for park preservation status. When George returns from a trip with new wife, Serena (Lawrence), in tow, business partners and former lovers find their once-favoured positions threatened. While George (who has a symbolic love/hate relationship with an elusive panther – no, really) turns a shooting party into a duel, Serena proves herself a master of horses and men alike, winning the undying loyalty of Galloway (Rhys Ifans) who will do anything for the woman to whom he is violently bonded. It’s a labyrinthine affair, overburdened with conflicting passions, descending inevitably into bereaved, barren madness as Lawrence plays Lady Macbeth to Cooper’s bland landowner.
For all its awkward convolutions, there is much to admire, not least Morten Søborg’s evocative cinematography and a talented supporting cast (Toby Jones, Sean Harris, Sam Reid), many of whom are suspiciously underused. A bland soundtrack leaves us longing for the fiddles and banjos of Winter’s Bone, but Lawrence plays her role like a virtuoso violinist; sweeping, soaring and cracking with elegiac grace.
