City of Your Final Destination

Based on the novel of the same name by Peter Cameron, Omar Razaghi (Metwally) is an Iranian-born graduate student whose fellowship hinges on finishing an authorized biography of deceased Latin American author Jules Gund. The unexpected withdrawal of the Gund Estate throws Omar's world into disarray, and Omar is left with no choice but to travel to Uruguay and petition Gund's executors to change their minds. Omar arrives into a hornet's nest of intrigue and idiosyncrasy. The Gund "family," living together on the author's isolated and decaying estate, includes Gund's widow, Caroline (Linney); his mistress, Arden (Gainsbourg); Gund's brother, Adam (Hopkins), and Adam's partner, Pete (Sanada). Omar's unannounced arrival upsets their fragile co- existence, causing all to question their own circumstances and fates, which in turn leads Omar himself to question his own existence up until now. THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION is a finely-tuned comedy of modern manners from which emerges that rarest of things: a film romance that is actually romantic; it is, to quote The New York Times review of Cameron's novel, a "pungent, airy, grave, and transporting commedia dell-arte [that] subtly, affectingly, erotically traces the beginning, the hesitations, the advances of a love affair." How we fall in love, how we find a home, and how we come to know, or change, ourselves are all questions that THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION deftly explores in this warm and engaging work. "The City of Your Final Destination" is as pure an example of the Merchant Ivory brand of upscale literary cinema as devotees of "Howards End," "A Room With a View" and "The Remains of the Day" could ask for. - Stephen Holden, New York Times