A well-respected professor who is a celebrated novelist and loving husband loses himself when he becomes obsessed with an ambitious and talented student.
Honoring the primacy of language for his characters, Levine deftly reveals the ways they wield it to seduce, attack, manipulate, repress and, occasionally, to communicate.
Submission lacks the insight and perspective to become a movie that represents "now." When the current cultural, political, and social climates are especially contentious, perhaps we need a movie that will address these issues head-on.
Tucci and Timlin are both quite good in their roles, and writer-director Richard Levine (adapting Francine Prose's 2000 novel "Blue Angel") does an excellent job of slowly escalating the pair's relationship.
Submission might make itself useful as a mandatory instructional video for male professors; a "Scared Straight" for campus PhD's thinking about messing with nubile co-eds.
The film squanders some dramatic possibilities and has a truncated sense about it. We are left to wonder whether something went wrong with the script, or in the editing room, or both.
...viewers will most likely overlook the strong performances by stars Stanley Tucci and Addison Timlin and instead focus on the wasted opportunity to say something important about this moment in our time.
Frustrating but sincere and well acted, especially by Tucci, who embodies a middle-aged man in transition, "Submission" explores well the risk associated with stepping out of one's comfort zone and shaking free from the stranglehold of mediocrity.
Submission is a fine film held back by a script full of convenient plot developments and flimsy writing; a cautionary tale for the consequences of men thinking with their junk too much
