In its theme and structure, Feast of Love is similar to Thornton Wilder's perennially produced play Our Town. In both, an all-knowing narrator introduces a handful of lovable people who live harmoniously in a small American community, and then he proceeds to periodically interrupt the re-enactment of their lives—which seem so full of love and hope and plans for the future—to drop broad hints about the heartbreak to come.

　　 A lot has changed, of course, in the 70 years since Wilder's play so movingly summed up the human condition. The boundaries of “family” are different now, young people are exposed to more hazardous rites of passage, and society seems more willing to accept unconventional romantic arrangements. These are some of the up-to-the-minute societal changes touched upon—and woven into—the multi-layered story told in Feast of Love, but the ultimate message is still the same: Love makes the world go around.

　　 Who could be better than Morgan Freeman to play the avuncular Harry Scott, who, in his twilight years, remains an optimist precisely because he knows how sad the world is?英文影评 On leave from his professorial duties, Harry is often found quietly observing the goings-on in a coffee house owned by his friend Bradley (Greg Kinnear), He's the first to note, for example, that Bradley's wife Kathryn (Selma Blair) has fallen for another woman. And Harry also recognizes the exact instant that Oscar (Toby Hemingway), the troubled young man who works in Bradley's coffee shop, falls irrevocably in love with a beautiful stranger, Chloe (Alexa Davalos).

　　 Almost every central character in this film harbors a secret. For Bradley's new love, Diana (Radha Mitchell), it's a clandestine affair with a married man (Billy Burke); for Oscar, it's a brutal father (Fred Ward); for Chloe, it's a psychic's dire predictions. Even Harry and his loving wife Esther (Jane Alexander) share a secret of sorts—a deep-rooted grief from which neither can manage to escape.

　　 But, even with all this Weltschmerz and tragedy—and there's a heavy dose of the latter near the end—Feast of Love is not a downer. There are plenty of breezy one-liners, many of them delivered by the incomparably clueless Kinnear. And Freeman once again displays his masterly grasp of the full range of human emotions—all the shadings from dark to light and back again. Speaking of masters, Robert Benton is surely one of the few directors alive who can get today's movie audiences to swallow a seriously intelligent movie that is served up with large helpings of unabashed, un-cynical sentimentality. There's not even a pinch of cynicism in Feast of Love, making this one of those rare cinematic treats that, for most of us, will go down easily and leave us with a sweet, mellow aftertaste.