Like its heroine, "Living Out Loud," the directorial debut of screenwriter Richard LaGravenese ("The Fisher King," "The Mirror Has Two Faces"), is something of a mess, but it's an often likable, intriguing one. It's the story of Judith (Holly Hunter), a fortysomething New Yorker who's looking for a new life now that her cardiologist husband Bob (Martin Donovan) has left her high and dry in the sumptuous apartment they once shared. If the story sounds a trifle familiar, think "An Unmarried Woman." In fact, "Living Out Loud" is the kind of movie that hasn't been produced very often since Jill Clayburgh retired from the screen almost 20 years ago. Hunter, it should be said, fills Clayburgh's high heels quite nicely, convincingly veering from neurotic to erotic and back again whenever the spirit moves her. Early on, Judith turns on the TV and finds herself bombarded by bad news about terrorist bombings and crack babies. This sets off a wonderful, rapid-fire internal monologue in which she wishes those terrorists "would just get over it" and wonders if she should adopt a crack baby. Seconds later she realizes her snotty Fifth Avenue neighbors would never cotton to that idea and that "my crack baby would never have any playdates." It's a moment that establishes "Living" as a writer's movie and an actor's movie, and it turns out to be exactly that. Although it often veers into surrealism, "Living" has much more in common with a good play or a novella than it does with your typical film, and LaGravenese's inexperience behind the camera occasionally shows, as several scenes consist of nothing more than talking heads going on at length about this or that. It doesn't exactly make optimum use of the Cinemascope frame. But "Living" does have a certain charm and color as well, through the bright casting of Danny DeVito as the unlikely knight in a shining elevator who helps Judith to see a life beyond her high-rise tower, and Queen Latifah, who's warm and winning as the jazz singer Judith idolizes and befriends. Although the story is mostly anecdotal and doesn't build to any sort of major point, "Living" has much to offer, including Queen Latifah's easy renditions of such standards as "Lush Life," a delightfully weird suicide fantasy sequence, a fairly hot dance number involving Judith and the patrons of a lesbian bar, and an unexpected but satisfying finale reminiscent of -- surprise -- "An Unmarried Woman." Well, if we've got to have '70s nostalgia, at least that's an oldie worth looking back on. James Sanford
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