If I were to give high praise to this film it is because it is so honest and raw, the characters are very real and complex with simple graces and flaws.
My biggest difficulty with this film is I didn't like either of the main characters very much. Julie Delpy's Marion often acts as the moral compass of the film despite turning a blind eye to acts of cruelty and vandalism. Adam Goldberg's Jack is immature, selfish and whiny. In many ways Goldberg's performance reminded me of Woody Allen. In his day Allen seemed Avant Garde, but for me the day of the neurotic self absorbed girly man is past and I found it most annoying.
The highlight of the film were Marion's parents, her father a cheerful man who eats rabbit heads, key's poorly parked cars and hate Jim Morrison seemed like a great deal of fun. Then there's her mother, former hippie who had an affair with Morrison (hence the fathers distaste) and was instrumental in the abortion movement now irons jeans.
The film had other problems, the introduction of a veggie-terrorist burning down fast food restaurants seems out of place. Also there are scenes when Marion talks over the action giving us explanation using what appear to be chalk drawings on the screen. There were 2 such sequences which appeared fairly late in the film and only used twice, it seemed out of place, schizophrenic even. I'd have preferred they use this convention earlier and at least 3 times to generate that we're seeing this from Marion's point of view, to come up where it did and only used twice made it feel incomplete. Similar conventions have been used in other films such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off where the title character often addresses the audience. Marion does narrate the film but initially does so as subtext rather than for the purpose of instruction.
I suppose you might call this an art film, it surely seemed like many of the films I saw in my film classes in college and it may take a certain high brow level of sophistication that I have not yet attained. On the other hand it could be just some self involved dribble so typical of films in the genre. Either way I'm glad it wasn't expensive to watch.
My biggest difficulty with this film is I didn't like either of the main characters very much. Julie Delpy's Marion often acts as the moral compass of the film despite turning a blind eye to acts of cruelty and vandalism. Adam Goldberg's Jack is immature, selfish and whiny. In many ways Goldberg's performance reminded me of Woody Allen. In his day Allen seemed Avant Garde, but for me the day of the neurotic self absorbed girly man is past and I found it most annoying.
The highlight of the film were Marion's parents, her father a cheerful man who eats rabbit heads, key's poorly parked cars and hate Jim Morrison seemed like a great deal of fun. Then there's her mother, former hippie who had an affair with Morrison (hence the fathers distaste) and was instrumental in the abortion movement now irons jeans.
The film had other problems, the introduction of a veggie-terrorist burning down fast food restaurants seems out of place. Also there are scenes when Marion talks over the action giving us explanation using what appear to be chalk drawings on the screen. There were 2 such sequences which appeared fairly late in the film and only used twice, it seemed out of place, schizophrenic even. I'd have preferred they use this convention earlier and at least 3 times to generate that we're seeing this from Marion's point of view, to come up where it did and only used twice made it feel incomplete. Similar conventions have been used in other films such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off where the title character often addresses the audience. Marion does narrate the film but initially does so as subtext rather than for the purpose of instruction.
I suppose you might call this an art film, it surely seemed like many of the films I saw in my film classes in college and it may take a certain high brow level of sophistication that I have not yet attained. On the other hand it could be just some self involved dribble so typical of films in the genre. Either way I'm glad it wasn't expensive to watch.