Director passionate about ‘Feast of Love’

By K. Michelle Moran
Arts & Entertainment Editor

Love is a many splendored — and multifaceted — thing in director Robert Benton’s latest film, “Feast of Love,” set to open nationwide Sept. 28.

“I think people too often, when they see films about love, confuse love with romance,” said Benton during a recent stop at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham. “And this is about love — tragic love, comic love, old love, young love, [parental] love. … It’s about those connections we make in our lives that cause us to think about someone else more than ourselves, to have affection, to put other people in some way at the center of our lives.”

Based on a novel by Michigan author Charles Baxter, “Feast of Love” features an ensemble cast that includes Greg Kinnear, Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell and Jane Alexander. Their lives intertwine at a coffee shop in a close-knit Oregon town, a change from the Ann Arbor setting in Baxter’s book.

“Feast of Love” also features Southfield native Selma Blair in a critical role.

“This was the most beautiful script I’ve ever read,” Blair said in a prepared statement. “And then with Robert Benton directing it, saying yes was just a given. I would have done anything to get to say a line in this movie, to get to watch this cast of people working together.”

Benton — who had never collaborated with Blair before but was impressed with her performances in other projects — asked her to be in the film and was impressed with her work in a difficult part.

“I loved Selma,” Benton enthused. “She’s terrific. … She is the first person [in the film] to fall in love, and she has to do it in a way that’s subtle and believable and not a caricature, and she does that wonderfully.”

A veteran director, Benton has turned a number of books into films, including “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Nobody’s Fool” and “The Human Stain.” After pal and novelist/screenwriter Richard Russo recommended Baxter’s book to him, Benton said, he desperately wanted to bring it to the screen. Another director had already optioned it, but when that project fell through, Benton got his chance.

The filmmaker had several discussions with Baxter during the project, but Benton admits that a film can never include the book’s full contents. His aim was therefore to preserve Baxter’s unique literary voice.

“I think what I try to do is respect both the voice and the intent of the novel,” he said. “The biggest problem is, at first, you have to take an eraser and cut out big hunks [of the story] and you have to put this thing together so that you still respect the novel, but you’re only using a third of it. … I will do a version of what I took from the book, and hopefully, what I took from the book has enough in common with what the novelist had in mind.”

You can reach Arts & Entertainment Editor K. Michelle Moran at kmoran@candgnews.com or at (586) 498-1047.