White Palace

Year of release : 1990

Run time : 1h43m

Genre : Drama / Romance

Cast : Susan Sarandon, James Spader, Jason Alexander

The movie is based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Glenn Savan.

The movie opens with Max, who seems to be obsessed with keeping his house clean and in perfect order (he fixes the carpet’s fringes!), going to a bachelor party. He bought 50 burgers from the White Palace diner, and at the party he finds out 6 boxes are empty. So he goes back to the diner, although his friends tell him not to. He gets to talk to Nora, who is a waitress there. She gives him back the money for the 6 empty boxes.

Back to the bachelor party, his friends are playing a collage of pictures of all of them when they were kids, including of Max’s wife, who died in a car crash. Max admits he’s still in love with her, and goes to a bar, after the party is over.

Nora, the waitress from the diner, is there, and sees him coming in. She goes to talk to him, and they both drink, until Max is too drunk to drive. He still drives though, and Nora is asking him to take her home. He does, and it’s pretty obvious she is interested in him, although he doesn’t seem to be interested in her.

He wants to leave, but he’s too drunk, so she offers him her couch.

In the middle of the night, she goes to him, and gives him orals, although he’s trying to push her off (if this was a man doing it to a woman, it would have been considered r@pe). They end up having s3x right after.

In the morning, although Max says he won’t come back, he does come back, over and over again, and they start a relationship.

When Nora’s sister comes to visit, that Nora doesn’t like, because she abandoned her when she was a kid, she tells him Nora’s son was found dead due to dr@g and alcohol abuse, on a lake’s shore, not of leukemia, like she said.

Nora’s sister is a psychic, and sees he still loves his dead wife.

At the same time, Max goes to the family events and the wedding by himself, as he is either embarrassed to be seen with Nora, as she is poor (at one point she doesn’t have electricity because she didn’t pay the bill), and older than him (she’s 42, while he’s 27 or 28 years old) or he knows his family and friends will make her feel uncomfortable.

The movie personally bored me. Max seems to be in love with Nora, but seems to be ashamed to present her to his friends, maybe because he knows the kind of people some of them are. He keeps her a secret until he has no choice but to take her to a family dinner (because she finds out about it).

Nora had a pretty tough life, and is a straight forward woman, who doesn’t have time to play the field and play games. Her house is a mess, with garbage all over the place, unlike Max’s house which is very clean and always in order. After Max buys her a cleaning device for her birthday, she starts cleaning the house, although she gets mad about the gift and sends him home.

The acting was good.

Kathy Bates makes a cameo appearance (apparently her role was bigger, but cut short ).

James Spader was beautiful, he reminds me of Jensen Ackles. Nora said he looks like Tony Curtis, which he doesn’t!

I didn’t like the soundtrack, as it contains a lot of saxophone music.

The movie received mixed reviews from critics, with higher scores from the audiences on the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic platforms.

The movie is labelled as erotic on Google, but I assure you, it’s not, there’s only one s3x scene at the beginning of the movie.

Viewer discretion is advised, as the movie contains nudity and mature language.

You can watch the full movie for free on the Ok.Ru platform.

Rating : Could have been a contender !