UNMADE BEDS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Chelsea Pictures Director: Nicholas Barker Writer: Nicholas Barker Cast: Aimee Copp, Michael De Stefano, Brenda Monte, Mikey Russo
Whatever happened to the swinging bachelor and the liberated, single female? In writer-director Nicholas Barker's new movie, the number of such persons in New York City is zero, and to prove it writ small, he explores the lives of four zeroes who are whining and depressed residents of the Big Apple. Each day they mix in with the city's lonely crowd and each day they return to their pads bewildered and frustrated with their inability to meet permanent partners. Why are these four, who are so motivated, nay, obsessed with the idea of locating someone to share their lives, unable to connect? The answer lies not in their ages, though one is 54 years old, but in their self-delusion, their inability to make necessary changes in themselves, their hostility toward the opposite sex, and perhaps even an unconscious desire to remain single. In a town of seven million people, it should not take one guy fifteen years of advertising in the personals and hanging out in bachelor classes like "Cooking for Singles" to find just one other human being.
"Unmade Beds" is a fictional documentary, and if that genre sounds like an original, the movie indeed is an archetype. Originality is not always coincident with quality, and while Barker's efforts--which apparently won him the audience award at the 1997 Telluride Film Festival in Colorado--evoke poignancy and at times hilarity, the story sinks in a sea of redundance after the first forty minutes. What's more, the story could probably be better told on the stage, the director dissolving time and space in the style that theater can do best.
About this oxymoron, "fictionalized documentary." What Barker did was to send a research team into the singles field, each disguised as a guy or gal on the prowl. They interviewed hundreds of New Yorkers on the phone and with camcorders, then chose four principals to be the center of the narrative. Treating these performers like subjects in a typical psychological experiment, he told them that he was using them for a feature and not a documentary, which would get them to lower their defenses. Based on extensive interviewing, Barker scripted a movie which dramatizes the flaws in the unhappy quartet.
He first introduces Brneda Monte, once a lap dancer and now the divorced mother of a teenager. She insists that her problem is not finding men but mining gold. Like an earnest CPA she sums up her plight: she takes in $2,000 per month but spends $3,000. She wants an older man with lots of cash and little libido to finance her life, and as payback is willing to toss him some sex, maybe three or four times a month. The other woman in the cast is Aimee Copp, who is 28, and who is determined to marry at age 30. (She does not say what she will do if she does not achieve her goal, but let's not imagine the potential damage she will inflict on herself.) Her trouble, she says, is that she is 225 pounds and that only big- woman fetishists are interested in such a heavy package.
Of the men, the more sympathetic is 40-year-old Michael De Stefano, a nice-looking guy who works for the city transportation department and who is dogged by comments like "Why aren't you married" from people who, he thinks, suspects that he is gay. He claims to be searching for a wife for 15 years, placing ads in the personals column of the New York Press and attending singles functions--all to no avail. Fifty-four year old Mikey Russo likes movies, writes screenplays, but is as unsuccessful in selling his stories as he is in selling himself to women.
From time to time director Barker, in a homage to Alfred Hitchcock, takes a brief break from the intense personalities to sneak looks through apartment windows, where New Yorkers seem not to care a fig about privacy as they undress and make love.
The good news and bad news alike--depending on your interpretation--is that you'll want to throw rocks and sticks at the people on the screen. They don't invite sympathy from the audience. Because of their flawed personalities and base motivations, they rouse disgust from the viewers. The best example is Aimee, who bitches and whines to her girl friend at every possible moment. She admits that she has always had a weight problem but says that her main man will just "have to be OK" on that since she will weigh this much for the rest of her life. She has apparently not heard of the concept that you can lose weight if you burn more calories than you consume and seems to blame the gods for making her fat. She is a woman with no redeeming features, either physical or personality-wise...well, maybe one, as she boasts: "I have health benefits." She considers herself better than guys she dates who don't have this advantage. She insists that she has a good job as well, as she well may, given the fact that she rides around the city in taxis and totes large bags from Balducci's.
Brenda Monte is also repugnant, but has the redeeming value of humor. Almost every word from her mouth summons laughter from the audience. She thinks she wants a mate not to fill up her lonely hours but simply to support her financially. She is the traditional gold-digger but doesn't have the looks or the charm to succeed in that profession--though she seems to attract males who want to show her their penises. "I get to see two dicks a day," or so she says.
Mikey Russo is a liar and a ne'er-do-well who despite his ordinary appearance insists that he will not date a "mutt." When he is stuck on a blind date with a mutt, he has a friend beep him. He then tells his date that he has an emergency situation in the office and must leave forthwith. Yet he, like the others, has no idea why women are turned off on him. "I'm not cheap," he boasts, "Every woman who comes to my apartment gets a new Oral B toothbrush."
The last time audience members wanted to throw things at the screen was at Neil LaBute's "In the Company of Men" which featured a sleazeball's plan to dump on a vulnerable female and ultimately on his own best friend. That movie was so good that it never wore out its welcome. Nicholas Barker should have quit while he was ahead, while his characters still had some charm and an ability to tickle our funny bones. When we spent as much time with them as we would with a date, we tend to become nauseated.
Not Rated. Running time: 105 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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