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Jul 24, 2008Michael rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
REVISITED THIS YESTERDAY - AND IT STILL HOLDS UP THE PROMISE OF A GOOD FILM! - M Michael Jul 24, 2008 Quirky, kinky, morose, I could go on - the sullen tone of this movie takes over your mind as soon as it opens - and I don't mean just in the non-verbal communication of the young would-be photographer Simon, who as a protagonist with a big Oedipus complex in this strangely beguiling movie makes you wonder if he's going to have what it takes to carry the film along to its inevitable conclusions. We don't have to wait long to find out because soon enough the absolutely beautiful-to-look-at Heather Graham appears as an erudite ophthaimologist and by a sheer accidental meeting in the park one day, the socially awkward Simon now has a subject to shoot. This is a movie about several of life's lessons - like serendipity, isolation, but primarly loss - the loss of a child; the loss of one of our 5 sense; the loss of innocence; and the loss of privacy, and how each person in the movie deals with their own personal loss. William Baldwin as Graham's estranged husband underplays his role as a college English teacher who is reminded of his loss even by the choice of literature and poetry he teaches. The Sopranos' Dominic Chianese moonlights as a painter, after delivering internal office mail during the day, and spends his spare time going to the opera. His Italian character Tommaso's plight is the most poignant. These main characters' lives and how they interact with those around them take subtle but important turns and you're left wanting to know more about them as the movie takes you into and then out of their personal stories. And just so the subliminal doesn't take over the movie entirely, there is a very steamy sex scene involving Heather Graham that'll make you want to run out after and rent every other movie she's ever been in. (men, for sure, and if her latest, "Gray Matters" is any indication - women too!) This film borrowed some of the best cinematic techniques of the past to pull together a very confluent story. I saw apects of the 1966 classic "Blow-up" to traces of "The Conversation", to even a parallel way the story unfolds as the obscure little Toronto Film Festival gem "When Will I Be Loved", in which by coincidence, Dominic Chianese starred in too, and his character in that movie was also named Thomasso. 3 1/2 stars /5