A wonderful 'Silver Linings Playbook' to open Philadelphia Film Festival

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence  do a lot of running in Silver Linings Playbook. They intersect on suburban Philadelphia streets, out for their morning laps, their evening laps, huffing, puffing, jostling, fighting.

They're trying to shed weight, these two. Not physical weight (although Cooper's character complains his meds are making him fat), but the burdens they're carrying around in their heads. Pat Solitano (Cooper, in an amazingly fierce, funny performance) and his uninvited tagalong, Tiffany, are damaged souls.

A head-spinning wonder of a movie about love and pain, reclamation and the totemic power of a National Football League franchise, Silver Linings Playbook opens the Philadelphia Film Festival on Thursday night and opens in theaters a month from now.

It is, without doubt, a transcendent endeavor, from its exhilaratingly smart screenplay - director David O. Russell's adaptation of the novel by former South Jersey teacher Matthew Quick - to the unexpected and moving turns of its two leads. And by everybody else (Robert De Niro! Jacki Weaver! Chris Tucker! Anupam Kher!) in its remarkable cast.

It's funny, it's tragic, it dives into a world wholly recognizable (doubly so for Philly natives, who have trod the same sidewalks, supped at the same diners, sported the same DeSean Jackson jerseys), and it springs from a great Hollywood tradition - the storm-tossed romantic comedy. Boy meets girl, boy and girl are separated by momentous conflict, boy and girl overcome obstacles to get together and live happily ever after . . . or do they?

Pat Solitano is a high school English teacher who, in the opening of Silver Linings Playbook, is just out from eight months in a Baltimore psych ward. He found his wife with another guy, he lost it - and then he lost his job. So it's home to his parents' house in Ridley Park - Pat Sr. (De Niro, doing his best work in years) and Dolores (Weaver), a couple whose world turns on Andy Reid and the Philadelphia Eagles. On game days, Pat Sr. sits at the TV (he's barred from attending the games; that's another story), his Eagles kerchief folded just so, wearing his Eagles sweater, betting big money on his team.

Eagles fever has rubbed off on his son - how could it not? So has a certain manic temperament. Pat Jr., diagnosed with bipolar disorder, reports to his therapist's office (the wonderfully wry Kher), hears Stevie Wonder crooning "My Cherie Amour," and goes ballistic. That was their song - Pat and his wife, Nikki. And now he's got a restraining order - he can't even see her. The song is a "trigger." There are plenty of others.

And then, at a dinner, Pat meets Tiffany. She, too, can rattle off a list of name-brand SSRIs and their respective nuances. She, like Pat, is functioning (just) - and functioning without filters. She'll say what's on her mind, no matter how wildly inappropriate or impolitic.

Pat and Tiffany seem destined for each other - except that Pat wants nothing more than to reconcile with Nikki, the love of his life. And Tiffany has her own issues: She's a young widow, she suffers from depression and low self-esteem, she sleeps around. And so the courtship begins.

Russell surveyed the crazy tumult of another fractious family in The Fighter, and he excels at wrangling large casts into tight, propulsive story lines (I Huckabees, Three Kings). The dialogue here ricochets. The emotions hit you sideways.

On a Halloween date over raisin bran and tea (how romantic!), Pat and Tiffany take brutal shots at each other. Their hurt and longing are palpable, a common bond they refuse to acknowledge. By the time she has persuaded him to be her partner in a dance competition, and they're at her place rehearsing moves to the croon of Bob Dylan, we're completely on their side. These two wackos need each other, and we need them to realize that fact.

In Winter's Bone, the film that first brought her acclaim, Lawrence showed the instincts of a fine actor - she could project inner fire and vulnerability without overselling things. But her performance in Silver Linings Playbook is a revelation nonetheless - she takes this broken woman and brings her to life with wit and grace and deep, dark currents of heartache. Cooper and Lawrence together are, well, awesome.

So is Silver Linings Playbook.

Directed by David O. Russell. With Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Julia Stiles, Chris Tucker, and Anupam Kher. Distributed by the Weinstein Co.

Running time: 2 hours.

Parent's guide: Not yet rated (profanity, sex, drugs, violence, adult themes).

Playing at: Philadelphia Film Festival, Annenberg Center for Performing Arts, 3680 Walnut St., 8 p.m. Thursday.EndText