Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You

“Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim”

That’s the way Ovid said it back in something like 5 AD; It means, “Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.”

A great quote like that one is just begging for a book title with the same name, and Peter Cameron recognized its beauty and wrote a modern-day Catcher In The Rye that he called, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You.

And then Italian director Roberto Faenza liked it so much that he decided to make an English language movie from it; it’s a really good book and it’s too bad a better director didn’t get the idea first.

It’s a Young Adult Book, so it can’t be judged with quite the same criteria as other novels, but I agree with Faenza; It’s a good story and in some ways I liked it better than Catcher In The Rye. (Have you read Catcher In The Rye lately? Holden Caulfield is more of a weirdo than I’d remembered.) Cameron’s protagonist, a teenage Manhattanite named James is odd, no doubt about it, and has a hard time interacting with others, but instead of just offering a character to identify with, as Holden did, James gives young people someone to admire. James struggles to find his place in life, but at the same time he offers hope to disenfranchised youth of today.

Director Roberto Faenza had always wanted to make a movie out of Catcher In The Rye, but Salinger never wanted to sell the rights to the book, so when he found Cameron’s book he saw his chance. It was a good idea that was poorly executed.

Faenza took the book’s salient edge and sanded it down; the characters’ genuineness and flaws were diluted. In it, James’ grandmother was too cute, his mother too weak, and his therapist too much like a female Mr. Rogers. The soundtrack is too sappy, the lighting too bright, and New York, too clean.

And the cast. On paper it looks great, but it’s really just a bunch of washed up actors making up a kind of B-list group whose overacting feeds on each other and the weak script. Marcia Gay Harden, Peter Gallagher, Lucy Liu, Stephen Lang, and Ellen Burstyn have all had their day, but this isn’t it. Toby Regbo plays James and he’s fine, but just fine.

This movie opened in Italy – Un giorno questo dolore ti sara utile – earlier this year but don’t look for it in US theaters anytime soon. I’ll let you know if I hear that it’s available for streaming or on Pay-Per-View here in the US.

correction:

I spoke too soon! It’s been pointed out to me that this film will be in US theaters on October 5. I think it might be limited to large cities, but I’m not really sure. I’ll let you know more when I find out. Thanks to whoever it was that helped with the information.