I Love You, I Love You Not

Claire Danes may be one of Hollywood's hottest young actresses, but she has yet to find the right vehicle for her talents. In Romeo and Juliet her effervescence was suffocated by Baz Luhrmann's over-wrought craftsmanship. Here too, Danes plays a delicate spirit struggling against a coarse backdrop. Her Daisy is an introverted Jewish girl who attends a snobby Manhattan prep school. She falls for the school stud (a Loki-like Jude Law), but just as things near adolescent bliss, Daisy's rosy world crumbles when her classmates discover that her grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. Instead of respecting the fragility of her personal heritage, they maliciously label her a "Jew" and play hateful pranks on her.

The premise, based upon Wendy Kesselman's play, is a well-intentioned coming-of-age saga that nonetheless wallows in shameless symbolism (including some ill conceived re-enactments of the Holocaust), painting Daisy as a modern-day Anne Frank wandering through plot shards that seem borrowed from School Ties and Mad Love. Despite the stiff jumpiness of the script, Danes spans the emotional spectrum, but the film's saving grace comes from Jeanne Moreau as Daisy's grandmother. She breathes an air of dignity into scenes that might have otherwise been plain silly. At the Kendall Square.

-- Tom Meek