untitled
FLANNEL PAJAMAS
Directed by: Jeff Lipsky
Internet Movie
Database Entry for full details
GRADE: B (2.7/4)
2006.
I’m only
human, so even I (that's right, even me) can occasionally get suckered into seeing a movie
based solely on the appeal of a great trailer. For example,
the trailer for Good Night and Good Luck is so good it can make you
want to see the movie even after you just saw it. After
seeing the Shopgirl trailer fifty times, my rational resistance to
renting it was worn down ("maybe it won't be so bad after all..."). And the trailer for Flannel
Pajamas, with its super catchy pop song and Technicolor intertitles
reminiscent of My Own Private Idaho, struck a chord with me. I
figured I’d wait and read the reviews and try to make a less
emotional decision -- after all, in my current financial situation $10.75
is a of money to gamble -- but when none appeared in the papers on the day it opened, I decided to
treat myself and take the risk.
Well, I can’t say my optimistic indulgence was pleasantly gratified, but
neither can I say that I was utterly disappointed. The film presents a
deeply realized character study that’s long, talky, and
absorbing. Its fly-on-the-wall glimpse into a romance, from its promising beginnings to its
troubled end, is brutally and unflinchingly honest – a
courageous act on behalf of its stars, Justin Kirk and Julianne
Nicholson, and its writer-director.
Stuart and Nicole are set up on a blind date and really hit it
off. Stuart makes his living by inventing phony back-stories for
Broadway plays to
induce larger ticket sales, and he’s such a good
bullshit-artist that he is able to put on an act convincing enough that
Nicole eventually agrees to marry him. Once they are married,
however,
the mask of the courtship ritual is removed, and the characters become
more honestly themselves. Consequently, their relationship begins
to disintegrate.
To anyone who’s ever been in a bourgeois
relationship or, according to the aureate Stephen Holden, "if you
belong to the college-educated class of New York professionals that
believes in talking things out," the film’s particulars and generalities are both at once
painfully familiar and comfortably foreign, leaving the
viewer at a safe
distance and yet deeply emotionally involved. The film's first
half, which sets the romance up for its inevitable fall, is wonderfully
executed and alone makes the film worth seeing. Its tightly
connected scenes of a bourgeoning love affair are so precisely
detailed, subtextual and candid as to render them utterly captivating.
Its second half, however, loses its focus by straying too far
into external family drama. Suddenly subtext becomes simplytext.
Nicole's mother exposes that she is an anti-Semite of the Grammy
Hall variety, except she isn't played for laughs, and it starts to feel
a little ridiculous. You can almost hear Lipsky whispering in the
back of the theater, "did you hear that? Someone said, 'Jew want some popcorn? Not do you, but jew, jew want some popcorn...'"
Lipsky has a far better understanding of relationships than he does
family and religion, and it unfortunately shows. When he begins
to abandon the hermetic world of the relationship for a contextual look
in from the outside, the film suffers and it never fully recovers.
Lipsky attempts to say, rather than show, that the relationship
is more complex than he ever really established. Just by
declaring that the failure of the marriage is rooted in religious
conflict and family histories doesn't make it convincingly so; all I see are two people gradually drifting apart for personal
reasons not elucidated by an exploration into their genes. Tashsa Robinson put it best in her trenchant review: "she needs...her overprotective mother, and he needs absolutely anyone who'll let him play overprotective mother."
But what I really didn’t understand was what the director was
trying to say with the frequent non-diegetic sound of passing
trains.
Just kidding, I saw it at the Angelika. -- Henry Stewart
Link to the official site, where the trailer is available
(After writing this review I watched the trailer again and couldn't
help thinking, "God, wasn't this such an incredible film?" Ah, the
power of trailers...)
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