Hot it's not

Ethan Hawke's novel, The Hottest State, turns film but fails to turn heads

By Alexa Weibel
Published: September 12th, 2007 | 5:45pm

Ethan Hawke's The Hottest State opens with the idealistic America of 'Marlboro Country' billboards: sweeping mountain vistas, teenagers guzzling Coke, the vastness of Texas... Until the narrator confides, "Three weeks later I was conceived in the back of that Plymouth. I wondered if sex was easier in Texas than it was in New York."

Resentful of his upbringing and victim of a broken home — Dad left him for rehab then, eventually, a whole new set of offspring; he next "left Texas for Mom's wanderlust" — William Harding (Mark Webber) has found himself the struggling actor in Brooklyn. But he's likable, earnest, optimistic — and, unfortunately, defined by his puppy-dog enamor with the taciturn Sarah (lamely played by Catalina Sandino Moreno of Maria Full of Grace).

Within the first week of meeting her, William has proposed marriage, she's moved in and the house is decorated with flowers. Sarah soon warns him, "I'll probably just run away and leave you crushed" — next follows the perfunctory conversation about the inevitable breakup, which reads like a sub-par script from a freshman-year intro-to-writing class.

"In love at 20; heartbroken at 21."
The entire film traces William's love for Sarah, at first returned, albeit sparingly, then later agonizingly unrequited. For every loquacious declaration of love he professes, Sarah — who is somehow pegged as The Intense, Artsy, and Smart Foreign Chick — responds apathetically or, worse yet, belittles his interest. At one point Sarah finally vocalizes what I found myself wondering: "Why do you like me so much?" He responds, "Because you're special." "You're such a dumb boy," she retorts. A woman of few words, but silence doesn't equate intelligence — she truly seemed too banal to allow the film credibility.

Sarah's lack of appeal aside, the film can't surpass its languid pace — the dated sense of '90s grunge is not it's downfall, for if it possessed more of Reality Bites' or Linklater's Before Sunrise earnestness, it might have succeeded, but not without the accompanying snappy scripts and endearing idiosyncrasies.

The philosophical setups of the film are painfully pedantic. A front-porch scene in which Sarah philosophizes, "[As a child] everyone wants you to follow your dreams, but as adults they don't want you to," recollects the concept of adolescent "artsy" types taking photos of their shoes and dubbing it "art."

Nonetheless, the film is boosted by a few redeeming tender, earnest moments and a stellar secondary cast. During the couple's honeymoon period in Mexico, Sarah, no longer weary of intimacy, decides she's ready to have sex. After a few awkward foibles marked by William's competing sense of nervousness and zealousness, he finally decides, "Let's just go to sleep, alright?" Laura Linney is outstanding as the kooky mother, who, when witnessing William's post-breakup disintegration, goofily advises him to "Read some books. Take that gorgeous, sexy body outside and move it."

Ethan Hawke — who wrote the book and screenplay and directed the film — plays the smoldering father, wounded by his own failure as a parent. He does, however, sagely offer William the most priceless piece of advice: "People who give up on love aren't worth loving."

Although the denouement of the film is painful to watch, as William tries everything — from the cliche to the downright pathetic — to woo Sarah back (thrift-store tux with box of chocolates, early-morning serenades, Shakespeare soliloquies, and, later, obsessive phone calls and epic voicemail messages), for the most part The Hottest State plays as a coming-of-age diary: tepid and prosaic.