Maldeamores

[written for Global Nomads at http://www.janera.com/]

directed by Carlos Ruiz Ruiz and Mariem Pérez Riera
written by Jorge Gonzales and Carlos Ruiz Ruiz
Puerto Rico 2007

Three twisting love stories make up Maldeamores, the most recent offering from a small Caribbean island not exactly known for its film scene. The Puerto Rico Film Commission would like to see that notion changed, though. Boasting the largest tax incentive of any community in the Caribbean, the PR government offers a 40% break for producers of cinema, television, and original soundtracks. How wonderful it is, then, that the first project born of this new plan is about as native Puerto Rican as they get. First-timers Carlitos (as he's affectionately billed) Ruiz Ruiz, and wife Mariem Pérez Riera not only direct this gem but appear in a comical opening sequence, laden with the kind of subtextual angst that only a married duo could muster. A silly argument over gum quickly results in near catastrophe on a mountain highway. The film continues without the pair, and follows three unconventional love stories on different parts of the island. The film's title translates into English as "Lovesickness", but what this film brings is certainly not the kind of sappy sentimentality with which that word is usually associated. A better translation would probably be "sickness from love." This opening bit is just a taste of the struggles to come, and if the kind of dark humor that absolves jokes involving neck braces isn't your cup of café con leche, perhaps you'd better steer clear of this one.

In story one, we're introduced to a grieving family. Well, at least Lourdes (Teresa Hernández) is grieving over her recently passed grandmother. Her adolescent son (Fernando Tarrazo) struggles with his tears in the back seat, more interested in putting on a big front to impress a darling cousin. Lourdes' husband Ismael is played by the only recognizable actor in the ensemble, Luis Guzmán, a Hollywood mainstay and PR native. A usually vibrant Guzmán this time only blandly fills the role of the unfaithful Ismael, but the standout is easily the exchange between Ms. Hernández and Norman Santiago, who plays her brother-in-law Macho. Santiago's clumsy ne'er do well is as vacant as the sun-bleached neighborhood, and Lourdes' temper only shortens. The relative obscurity of this cast certainly doesn't affect its impact, though. Next up is easily the shining star of the vignettes, a septuagenarian love triangle that depicts a hilarious exchange between a saucy--yet sensible--old flirt, her curmudgeonly companion, and to complete the trifecta, the most cavalier of ex-husbands, a model of that smoothly benign Caribbean machismo. His 70 years of likeability are quite infectious, and this lovely triangle resolves itself extremely well despite the difficulties. Silvia Brito's Flora, through obvious faults of her own, finds herself in the middle of a battle for her highly regarded attentions. On one side is Cirilo (Chavita Marrero), the mean-tempered but endearing live-in mate of Flora's. On the other side is Miguel Ángel Álvarez's charming Pellín, his abject advances--despite decades of delinquency--are only justified when he asks Flora an interesting rhetorical question, "Have you ever considered the fact that we're all going to die?" Love and death, some would say, are the only two questions to ask. It's in these moments that the film takes leave of its comic lightness and breaks into more interesting territory. For young filmmakers, Ruiz and Riera are tackling some very sophisticated themes.

The third vignette continues on the theme of love and death. The story centers around a daily bus passenger, Miguel, played by Luis Gonzaga. Despite an overly attentive mother, his loneliness drives him to an obsession with Marta, the driver (Dolores Pedro), and a suicide attempt becomes a hostage situation. Fortunately, Ruiz and co-writer Jorge Gonzales keep things on the lighter side and the situation devolves into a kind of wedding. Love, death, and hostages. Ruiz and Riera certainly don't shy away from depicting the omnipresent Virgin Mary watching over the affairs in supremely Catholic Puerto Rico. Maybe we're all hostages when it comes to love, and perhaps the filmmakers are posing the question as to whether maybe the Virgin isn't better off?

Despite some clunks, the three narratives complement each other well. An adulterous man loves too much, a bus driver too little, and three elderly socialites reflect on lives that included a little of both. Eduardo Alegría's and Omar Silva's score is marvelous in its simplicity, the piano an artistic accent rather than an emotional cue. Ruiz, Riera, and cinematographer P.J. López again rein in the arthouse indulgence on the photographic style, instead opting for a realistic impressionism that highlights performance and drama over heavy-handed camera work. This style, though, allows for those small observational details to translate nicely into some beautiful, yet fleeting, visual moments. It's almost as if the photogenic Caribbean beauty can't help but escape into the frame. Though in a film that centers around love, death, and hostages, perhaps escape isn't such a surprising thing.

Paranoid Park

directed by Gus Van Sant
screenplay by Gus Van Sant
novel by Blake Nelson
France, USA 2007

What Gus Van Sant has done this time around is he's slightly shifted his main focus. Elephant, Last Days, and his more recent Paris, je t'aime segment are so interesting because they walk a fine line between familiarity and extreme strangeness. In 1942, Albert Camus imprisoned his "stranger" for a failure to assimilate, emotionally, thus removing him from the existential trap posed by the world. Van Sant has been positioning his own emotional strangers in what we would have assumed were familiar environments, and deliberately allowing them to remain, unbridled, until some inevitable natural dissonance. I'm seeing this latter phase as a transition from the formal ambitions of his earlier years to a more zen-like acceptance of the inconsistencies that represent a so-called "normal" life in the weirdness of today's upper middle class society. The past three releases have also seemed to drop that passionate devotion to the angst of youth in favor of a clinical indifference. This quiet, contemplative phase sees Van Sant exploring--rather than battling against--the strangeness. In PP, however, there's a return to that passion. What was strange for us in Elephant--the diverse social lives of children, confused sexual attractions, a world that literally comes in and out of focus--now helps to define main character Alex. Rather than holding up a carnival mirror, distorting the lives of children in order for a grown-up audience to understand the inconsistencies in their own lives, PP really invests in the worldview of Alex and his skater friends, while still pointing out that unnamable, universally frustrating dissonance.

Part of that frustration stems not from Alex's crisis of conscience (which throughout the film nicely serves as a moral weathervane, the old kind, where it's ambiguous which way it's actually pointing), but from the constant reminder that it's possible for rich white males to get away with murder. Detective Liu is sickeningly cordial with Alex. With no pressure from an interrogation, it's not surprising that he's able to breeze his way through the ordeal. In a world such as Larry Clark's, for instance, skaters are pushed around and dehumanized, while Gus Van Sant's counter-culture are treated with the kind of retroactive immunity popularized by today's corporate-controlled leadership. Have we reached the point where skating is finally an acceptable outlet for our children, rather than a dangerous sign of rebellion? One more subcultural trend transcending into the mainstream, perhaps.

While this kind of incongruity is happening, Van Sant follows, with a great degree of compassion, his youthful subjects. He and cinematographers Kathy Li and Christopher Doyle (my favorite; he's Wong Kar-wai's go-to guy) seem to enjoy spinning the rings on the lens, as this time not only the focus shifts, but the exposure as well. It's a nice touch, providing a kind of physical punctuation to color Alex's internal (and the audience's external) struggle. This photographic style is quite interesting in that it provides a visceral tension without the usual discordant music, jagged editing, disturbing content (although there is some of that included in one of the many flashback sequences), hand-held jumpiness, straight out of the textbook, etc. And speaking of flashback sequences, we're once again provided with an incongruity. The story being framed within Alex's own narrative, the question is posed as to why certain story elements have been included earlier and some later. I would argue the plot follows a familiar path from establishment and foreshadowing, through decision and complication, and finally to resolution. The question, then, is why would such an obviously novice writer choose to tell it in such a way? Perhaps the point is that we see our own lives in terms of plot structure, in a sort of an attempt to make sense out of the mess.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

directed by Andrew Dominik
screenplay by Andrew Dominik
novel by Ron Hansen
USA 2007

One of the more interesting things about this film from sophomore writer-director Andrew Dominik is the narration. Actually many exciting moments come through here, despite its documentary style and a cadence reminiscent of a Sunday morning on National Public Radio. Far too description-y to forget it's there, this anachronism of voice-over contrasts with what seems to be the aim of most writers--to provide information as discreetly as possible. Conventional methods and Robert McKee steer us away from a pronounced narrator, but in Assassination the effect is more holistic than ever. In the appropriate fashion of 19th Century newspaper drama, there is an off-handedness that somehow passes judgment while remaining as close as is possible to the version of history most widely regarded as fact. Sounds like a tough task, but upon reflection is probably what many of those same newspaper writers dealt with as the Wild West died out. An idealistic sinkhole. The kind of mythos surrounding Jesse James and his exploits made for fine storytelling, but when the rest of society caught up to the frontier, the party was over. Bankers, industry men, and politicians weren't looking for exciting outlaw serials, they looked to the papers to tell them whether or not the James gang would conceivably be robbing their shipment.

But the poets are the unsung victims, even though they die along with their work. The next generation of writers and historians pay hardly a mention as their forefathers die out. A more important extinction, that of Jesse and his outlaw lifestyle, makes the front page weekly. Assassination sticks around during this stagnation and allows a glimpse into the pathetic lives of a few remaining gangsters, still trying to live the dream. Bob Ford at least, played with such perfect strangeness by Casey Affleck, is the only one to acknowledge the idea that he is living out a childhood myth. Brad Pitt is such a nice choice to play the other title role because he instantly provides megastar status, despite appearing as hollow and lifeless as is expected of Jesse James, legend of a bygone era. Even brother Frank, played by Sam Shepard, knows when to quit. When things start getting too lonesome even for Shepard, then, well...

As far as disintegration goes, though, it's an extremely watchable one. Humans act with survival in mind, and not only is the James gang fighting to survive the end of an era, we're reminded of another cornerstone of civilization. As these guys squabble, weasel each other out, lose interest, and altogether fall apart, the real beauty of the West shines through. Dominik can't help but mock the paltry posse of fur-clad deputies struggling their way through the snow. He can't help but force an exasperated Charley Ford over a precarious frozen lake. All the wonderfully physical aspects of the West are still here, and it resonates much longer than the death dance of human mythology.

Darkon

written and directed by Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel
USA 2006

Role Playing Games, on the level of Final Fantasy or WOW, allow players to assume control over a complex environment without the use of social skills. Sadly, success in the real world is almost entirely dependent on social interactions and politicking rather than intelligence and imagination. With a certain degree of brains and an inclination toward creative thought, you could easily become a Chess master, but even the most menial job requires a completely different skill set usually detected more in facial gestures than quality of work. The D and D phenomenon has, to millions of gamers around the world, provided a model of upward mobility for even the dullest and most awkward personalities. It's no secret, whether it's success merely over the Playstation or over legions of multi-players around the globe, RPG's empower the socially challenged. But LARPing (that is, Live Action Role Playing) is a completely different story. In Darkon, the subjects' obvious performing for the camera, usually such a detractor in documentary material, is moot. The Darkon experience is all about performance in the first place. Whether there's a camera or not, Lord Bannor would still be hamming it up for the armies of players around him. Also, quite explicitly stated, it takes politics to succeed in Darkon. War councils may convene, strategies devised, and battles planned, but usually it takes a backdoor deal with Elven mercenaries to muster a victory. It's an important point, because it sets LARPing apart by re-introducing a social requirement.

It's not surprising that many of these characters are so charismatic and well-spoken. This type of gaming attracts extroverts and natural performers. If you can't talk the talk in Darkon, you won't get a speaking role. Directors Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel present aspects on both sides of the reality divide, intertwining the lives of their subjects with their subjects' characters. But socially, which is the way most people understand their own lives anyway, aren't these two aspects on the same level? At a back table in Denny's, Skip tries to retain the loyalties of his Laconian countryman, but at the same time isn't he just trying to retain a friendship? The Darkon event footage, including camp-outs, battles, and meetings, provides the same character information as the interviews at work and home. The most interesting departure from these character sketches are the staged sequences of the Darkon story, where the gamers are so completely ingrained in performance, and the real attraction to Role Playing is evident.

I can't help but see an allegory here. An offshoot of the intelligentsia that has pioneered gaming from its humble days of Chess and Backgammon to an MMO RPG empire, LARPing is the exploitative and power-hungry next generation. It is propagated by the movers and shakers and by the politicians. One Laconian puts it bluntly, "..that real world mentality keeps coming back. To be better than somebody else..." Those who can play the political game enjoy success in Darkon. Those with actual intelligence are largely forgotten in favor of likeability, charisma, and brute force. It's much like the capitalist democracy we deal with on a daily basis. Ralph Nader and the citizen advocates are either smeared or disenfranchised by the silver-tongued Party politicians. NGOs and established intellectually-based environmental organizations are silenced by George Bush and his puppet policy-making agencies on issues like peak oil and global warming. In the realm of Darkon and all over the real world, smooth talkers silence the meek with the power of social skills. And also much like the rest of the world, the decision makers of Darkon are usually men, they are usually short-sighted, and they are usually white.

Gone Baby Gone

directed by Ben Affleck
screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard
novel by Dennis Lehane
USA 2007

For whatever it's worth, let's not forget the guy's an academy award winner. Though it has been buried by years of so many completely ridiculous performances and juicy off-screen tabloidery, Good Will Hunting was a timely, intelligent, and tasteful piece of writing that should at least be recognized as an exciting offering by a couple of future super-celebs. Also let's not forget the obvious brains behind the Askewniverse roles. His inclusion in the Hollywood silliness self-awareness campaign of Kevin Smith (i.e. "...Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms.") at least belies Entertainment Tonight's cookie cutter version of the adorable but intellectually irrelevant leading man. So upon closer review of the evidence, perhaps a solid and smart directorial debut for Ben Affleck is not so drastically surprising. In fact, I don't think I'm the only one who had some inkling of curiosity as to when this lug would deliver on some of these vague promises.

Gone Baby Gone is not without its shortcomings, but there's a unique message that slowly builds a case as each new piece of tainted evidence comes to light. Young and attractive Patrick and Angie watch the neighborhood crisis on TV, a step removed from the world just outside their doorway. A shameless and domestically challenged Helene spits venom at her sister-in-law, and Patrick and Angie's underlying relationship tensions are like a drop in the ocean of trouble that is blue-collar Boston (or any city, for that matter). Angie, in another nice directorial touch, is deftly pushed aside for the entire first half of the movie, until she explodes past the men, over a hundred-foot cliff to certain peril. Ineffectual masculine power struggles are easily blown apart by the raw passion of the fairer sex. It's here that the film changes, and as Patrick becomes caught in a torrent of harsh difficulties, something in the filmmaking itself feels wrong. There are recognizable genre elements, but certain plot details become unimportant, while others are seemingly forgotten. Patrick slowly picks his way through the mess, and likewise the plot eventually makes sense out of the strangeness. In contrast to the Coens' No Country for Old Men, for instance, where we have a cohesive and meticulously formulated plot carrying us through the difficult intellectual material, GBG instead nearly falls to pieces in its construction of a similarly alienating environment.

In the end, Patrick champions the working class against the meddling upper-echelons. But in this case it's not a case of corporate exploitation, or any such Moore-ian social injustice. Affleck and novelist Dennis Lehane (also the author of Mystic River) have embedded an indictment of that same working class. What a statement! To boot, there are overtones of the fate vs. free will argument. Very nice. Lastly, Amy Ryan's portrayal of Helene is wicked. Only a serious commitment to a view of the world from the bottom up could have produced such righteous selfishness. It must have been a terrifying experience.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

directed by Julian Schnabel
written by Ronald Harwood
novel by Jean-Dominique Bauby
France, USA 2007

The first act feels abbreviated, as if Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby could actually will himself into acceptance of this condition on the strength of his considerable charisma. The man rocketed through an explosion of prestigious fame and fortune before his stroke, and in an inspiring way, rather than a rock star sequence coming to a crashing halt, this momentum seems to carry him through the initial shock and adjustment process, the Dark Passage of dealing with a delibitating event. Spielberg's photo man Janusz Kaminski shoots from a one-eyed perspective with mesmerizing focus pulls and pivot games. His and director Julian Schnabel's emphasis throughout these tender opening scenes is so obviously focused more on a visceral delivery of the Bauby experience than anything else, perhaps in hopes of somehow bringing to life that connection between sensory perception and imagination, body and mind. The man's body, though--as is revealed in the (frustratingly mostly expository) subsequent scenes--is secondary to what has formed him as a professional and as a man. A debilitating condition has the effect of bringing issues of human composition to the table. With such limited expressive capabilities, what is it that makes up the man? Schnabel's butterfly theme crowds the frame with light, pretty people, poetry, and an array of the Sun King extravagance of Versailles. Distracted from the more human attention usually given to cinematic in-patients, one must assume that Bauby's verve and consequent success, both post- and pre-trauma, can be attributed merely to his acceptance of the aristocracy. Before the sickness, rich people danced pirouettes around him, and after the sickness, rich people continued the act.


Schnabel's first film, 1996's Basquiat, told a similar story from a different perspective. Jean Michel Basquiat encountered that same doting personality upon his entry into the New York Gallery scene. A nobody to begin with, and a natural iconoclast, Basquiat eventually rejected the aristocracy that wanted nothing more than to buy and sell him in the name of humanism. Jean-Do Bauby's success, though, was built on harnessing this energy and putting it up at retail prices. A speedy and opportunistic adjustment to a life-changing event, something Basquiat failed to achieve, marks Bauby's saga. It's a fine story, even inspirational, but isn't it just the aristocrat in all of us that can appreciate it on that level?

Michael Clayton

written and directed by Tony Gilroy
USA 2007

Rather than just another issue-based left hook, Michael Clayton delivers a more cinematic glimpse at the underbelly of an otherwise canopied corporate world. Although the plot centers around a law firm and its mega-corporate client's criminal negligence, writer-now-director Tony Gilroy concentrates instead on the upper level power struggles involved, and deftfully brings to life an exciting interplay of major corporate movers and shakers. You might think this sounds like an irresponsible blockbuster stunt, going so far as to foresake its centripetal issue (corporate greed and the human costs), but happily this film is refreshingly far from typical Hollywood material. Gilroy keeps the morality theme interesting by removing his titular character one step from the dilemma of conscience (Clayton is played by an ever-resourceful George Clooney, who has mastered the puppy-dog trick of channeling a tendency to appear vulnerable into shere loveableness). The guy with the dilemma is Tom Wilkinson's Arthur Edens, something of a Peter Finch character from 1976's Network, who spits hellfire and brimstone at Clayton eventually in vain. Clayton is unaffected not because he's a cold corporate drone, but because he has a kid, a mortgage, debt, retirement anxiety, a family member with a personal problem. He's dealing with a lot of stressful shit, and now you're asking him to care about humanity?

If these things sound familiar it's because they happen to just about everybody. Gilroy attempts to show that these big money Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Corporate Robots have issues like the rest of us, and they're just trying to stay afloat in the arduous journey that is life. Corporate interests aren't happy when they poison communities with byproducts, but they're locked into a system that forces them to put aside morals in the name of personal stability.

Gilroy takes it too far, though. The end is a pitiful Hollywood bit of wrapped-up closure, where Clayton and the rest of those on the correct end of the moral spectrum get back at the bad guys. The point is that everyone is a victim, even those bad ones. The system is the problem, and Gilroy makes no further attempt to examine it. His cinema chops are fine, and it's a nice ride while it lasts, but it's almost as if this director is another character in his own story. He's got a job to do, a career, probably a family, etc. Eden's ethically-charged ranting falls on Gilroy's deaf ears, too, and though a nice film comes out of it, the issue is completely gone.

No Country For Old Men

written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
novel by Cormac McCarthy
USA 2007

I finally decided what nails me about this film, and it was only after something my friend Brian mentioned. The Coen brothers prove to be masterful nearly all of the time, combining taste and imagination with solid physical delivery of information within the film, for instance a dog chasing a man down a river is not only an awesome idea while the physical sights and sounds of it are pretty awesome in themselves. This is a usually unnamed feat that marks great filmmaking but in the Coen universe is held in higher regard than the film itself. It's similar to movies seriously immersed in genre, but the essential difference is that in those films thematic material--i.e. the message of the filmmaker--is allowed to surface due to that genre adherence, while in Coen work this thematic material gets completely lost. Any themes that exist in No Country, because they certainly exist, come across as some kind of sideline attraction on a cinematic rollercoaster.

The idealogy of competitive men, that violent motivation that runs the world and in a significant majority of cases supercedes that of all other human sects, including women, children, socialists, etc., is once again on full display. Can you name a 2007 film that doesn't, for lack of a better term, fetishize human masculinity? In the case of No Country this reliance on such a thematic mainstay is the only reason the film actually leaves any resonance. We pay rapt attention to the man-dance on stage and whatever existential struggle that plays out is unfortunately overshadowed by the many years of man that came before. OK, I'll admit it's about time existentialism is treated with the hilarious irony it deserves. Rather than some Sam Shepherd world, taken a shade too seriously, Cormac McCarthy's story bounces not only with the absurd humor of founding thinkers like Ionesco and Albee, but somehow these days this absurdity makes complete ironic sense. Either way, there's some solid filmmaking here that only seems to get in the way of it all.

There Will Be Blood

directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson
novel by Upton Sinclair
USA 2007

Rather than stick to the usual Daniel Day-Lewis program of: 1) point camera, 2) record every sound out of his mouth, and 3) sit back and watch, P.T. Anderson has once again proven his considerable directorial skill by harnessing the presence of this master of method-acting into just another tool in his sizeable kit. The opening shot explicitly demonstrates Anderson's control over the turn-of-the-century world he creates, blasting discordant sounds that resemble music over a rugged landscape. It's an old move (like one of my favorites, Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock), but like all of Anderson's moves, he executes it with such taste and discretion so as to nicely garnish his storytelling. Very soon after, Daniel's body lies at the bottom of the well-shaft, the crude itself glistening in what little light filters in, an omen of riches to come. For a second, there's no plot or narrative content as the gems of oily reflected light dance around, and the crude oil itself is the scene-stealer, a reminder that even the great Daniel Day-Lewis/ Daniel Plainview, both actor and character, despite such power and resilience, are but a drop in a barrel in this world. Anderson proceeds to out-frame, under-light, and exert countless other subtle strategies toward his leading man in order to further embed him in the picture.

Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood punctuates the film nicely with an interesting take on a jazz fusion/modern chamber music score. The horns and sax reminisce the best bits of Punch Drunk Love, though the violin often seems heavy-handed.

The theme is slightly confusing when the film takes its departure from the spirit of Upton Sinclair, on whose story the screenplay is based. Where Sinclair was an unrelenting, trust-busting social activist, P.T. Anderson is an entertainer. Daniel Plainview's story, quite deliberately, is not representative of the oil industry, an industry that today earns record-setting profits and has absolute dominance over the entirety of human society. When Plainview refuses Standard Oil's million-dollar offer, he becomes something other than this industry. His snide quips about Standard owning the railroads is Anderson's sliver of social commentary, perhaps dividing the world of capitalism into Old money vs. New money, and illuminating a fringe element of humanity therein. The titular blood is spilled by a capitalist renegade, a new-money man, and a fierce competitor, not by the old-money establishment. What's left after the blood is clear is just another well-told character piece, pulling its punches at some truly great opportunities to break into the dirty mind of state-sponsored capitalism.

My Blueberry Nights

directed by Wong Kar-Wai
written by Won Kar-Wai and Lawrence Block
Hong Kong, China, France 2007

So I come to Hong Kong, and Wong Kar-Wai goes to New York. Maybe we both needed to tread water for a little while.

Craftsmanship has always been idealogically divided against itself. The perfection of mass production is balanced by the imperfection of authenticity. Likewise, in the past Wong Kar Wai's strict formalist visual tendencies (i.e. In the Mood for Love, 2046) have made for such flawless delivery, while his playful chaos of shutter speed effects and hand-held trickery (i.e. Chungking Express, Fallen Angles) has beautifully roughened the edges of his ouevre.

My Blueberry Nights may be Wong's first to attempt a reconciliation of these contrasting styles, and he is aware of the craftsman's existential trap. Norah Jones gives a perfectly atrocious performance as Lizzie, an impossibly naive fish out of water, despite hailing from New York of all places. Wong's foray into the American experience is so wonderfully similar, a non-actress fills this title role with that universal authenticity of imperfection. To Jones' credit, this script is so clunky that even naturals Jude Law and Natalie Portman can't escape without some black and blues. But the blacker the blueberry, the sweeter the juice, and Wong seems to run with the idea, forsaking naturalist dialogue for a few excellent lines between clunks ("I'm the king of the white chips," "I beat that game on its ass!"). It's another extension of his reconciliation, like some impossible-to-deliver David Mamet script; stumbling gives the auteur some cred.

The theme of dishonesty is so auspicious in this film, as well. It's not only that Jones can't sell her lines, or that much of these characters' backstories is left unsaid. It's hard to believe that Leslie in fact beat that game, or that Lizzie really was mugged on the subway, or even that Jeremy's key stories are all true. Like Wong himself, his characters struggle with success. A winning image isn't authentic. It's only when we've been roughed around the edges that we've actually lived through something.