In spite of many critic's declarations against this, Dylan Kidd's P.s. is not the superior version of Brian Glazer's Birth. Where Birth was a Kubrick-ian study of grief—an off-putting, difficult chamber piece concerning children sexuality, rationalization, madness and the clashing of fairy tales against the harsh realities of life, P.s. is an effected indie pop song, dipping into an aging woman's fixation on a youngster with ungainly cloying.

Adapted from one of those novels Oprah book club readers graduate up to (by Helen Schulman), P.s. gives us cinema's everywoman beauty, Laura Linney as Louise, a 39-year old admissions administrator at Columbia. She's lonely, lovelorn and somewhat terrified of aging. The film opens with Louise meticulously applying natural looking, youthful makeup with determed trickery. Later, she's shown staring into mirrors or objecting to her mother referring to a woman in the past as "your age." And her friends don't make her feel any better, pointing out the calories she's counting or how their breasts are sagging. What a joy to grow old.

She wields little control in her job but does take the admissions of students seriously, looking at their work (and in one deleted scene on this DVD) wishes she could take a more active part in the final decision. She does have some effect on one applicant however, when one F. Scott Feinstadt(Topher Grace) sends in a letter that too closely reminds her of someone else. She calls him and asks for a face to face interview. The moment he walks in (late)—it's uncanny—his name, looks and art exactly match that of her long lost teenage lover from over 20 years ago.

Though she doesn't reveal the bizarre circumstances right away (or that she still smells her dead lovers belongings she keeps in a box at her mothers house), the two immediately hit it off. They have sex in fact, and after the act, F. Scott oh so youthfully proclaims the deed as "fucking awesome" (one of the film's better moments). The awkwardness and speed of this scene gives P.s. major points; its not often you see a picture deal frankly and unglamorously with the quickie. It also makes us suspect F. Scott's intentions. Is he just a horny 19-year old (well, yes) or will he fall for this woman who's placed quite a lot of importance on him, a kind of significance that maybe he can't handle? Because really, how many teenagers would respond to a two-decade older woman proclaiming them their dead High School sweetheart?

Included in this conundrum, there are side stories that flesh out Louise's character into the problematic destiny seeker she is. Her ex husband, a physics professor (Gabriel Byrne) who's still her friend, drops the bombshell that he's a sex addict. He cheated during their ten year marriage with hundreds of female students and well over ten men. Her best friend (Marcia Gay Harden), the one who stole the original Feinstadt away from her, is straight-from-the-movies-bad-girl; copious cleavage and all. She'd fit right in down there at Desperate Housewives. Her friend gets in on the youngster too and, at this point, the film becomes unrepentantly dopey. The bizarre, doomed-fueled relationship between F. Scott and Louise is drowned out by high drama and forced humor (and I think the film wants to achieve both of these planes simultaneously—like Kidd's superior debut film Roger Dodger). No longer do we care about reincarnation or the longing Louise has to reaffirm her youth or her ex or whatever it is missing in her life. It's too bad because though Linney received kudos for her role, it's a clear-eyed Grace who excels at mystery here, the film working best when you can't tell if he's toying with Louise. Taking Grace's lead, the film should have remained, like Birth, enigmatic.

The DVD:

Video:

Columbia/Tri Star presents P.s. in Widescreen Anamorphic (1.85.:1). The transfer is warm and crisp highlighting the college/fall colors so richly drawn in the picture. Not utterly perfect, but fine.

Sound:

The audio comes in Digital 5.1. Dolby and 2.0 Dolby Surround. There are no problems with the sound, each moment of this dialogue-heavy film resounds clearly.

Extras:

Extra's include an audio commentary by Dylan Kidd that is informative and intelligent, though not terribly interesting. There are also deleted scenes that give a little more insight into the characters with the option of Kidd's commentary discussing why they were cut. Linney's insecurities in general are displayed more pointedly in some of these moments. Also included are trailers.

Final Thoughts:

A woman's movie that tries too hard to understand them (there are some phone conversations between Linney and Harden that are dreadful); a spiritual picture about the possibilities and perhaps, impossibilities of re-birth; a study of being stuck in the middle of your life, P.s. is something of a mess. Aside from Grace's rich performance, P.s. never clicks into that obscure object of desire it so wants to be.

Read More Kim Morgan at her blog Sunset Gun