Feast of Love
Feast of Love is a 2007 American drama film directed by Robert Benton, and starring an ensemble cast that includes Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Radha Mitchell, Billy Burke, Selma Blair, Alexa Davalos, Toby Hemingway, and Jane Alexander. The film, based on the 2000 novel The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter, was first released on September 28, 2007, in the United States.
Not to be confused with love feast.Feast of Love
The Feast of Love
by Charles Baxter
Kramer Morgenthau
- September 27, 2007
102 minutes
United States
English
$5.7 million
Production[edit]
While many of the movie's scenes are set at Portland State University, the nearby campuses of Western Seminary and Reed College were the actual locations of filming. Locations at Reed include the Blue Bridge, the front lawn and Eliot Circle. Scenes in the Jitters Cafe, owned by Kinnear's character, were filmed at the Fresh Pot at the corner of N Mississippi Avenue and Shaver streets in Portland.
Asked if Radha Mitchell needed any coaxing for the full frontal fight sequence where she and her married lover have at it, Robert Benton replied: "Not at all. Radha wanted to do a second take, and I thought, 'Are you insane?' I've learned when an actor says, let's go again, to do it. There's a little moment when she's smoking after lovemaking, and they're laughing together. I had nothing to do with that scene, except saying 'Action' and 'Cut.'"[1]
Critical reception[edit]
The film received mixed reviews from critics. As of June 2020, it holds a 39% approval rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 117 reviews with an average rating of 5.29/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Though beautifully photographed, Feast of Love offers little beyond a trite, melodramatic character drama."[2] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 51 out of 100, based on 28 reviews.[3]
In his lukewarm review, Roger Ebert stated, "No movie can be very good that contains Fred Ward's worst performance (it's the fault of the character, to be sure)."[4]
Box office[edit]
In its opening weekend, the film grossed US$1.7 million in 1,200 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #12 at the box office.[5] It grossed a total of US$5.4 million worldwide – US$3.5 million in the United States and Canada and US$1.9 million in other territories.[6]