Storytelling

Released 2002
Stars Selma Blair, Leo Fitzpatrick, Robert Wisdom, Paul Giamatti, Mark Webber, John Goodman, Julie Hagerty, Noah Fleiss, Jonathan Osser, Lupe Ontiveros
Directed by Todd Solondz

I greatly enjoyed Todd Solondz' first two films (Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse), but this one left me cold. Roger Ebert said he had to watch it three times before he could make up his mind whether he liked it (he did), but I didn't enjoy it enough to watch it again. It's an angry film in which Solondz takes potshots at his critics and pokes fun at himself, but I'm not sure what all he's trying to say. He crammed two short stories into one short film, but neither short is given enough time to be effective. The first story explores political correctness, racial issues, and abuse of power. It's about a college girl who sleeps with a fellow student in her writing class because he has cerebral palsy ("cp" she whispers). After a spat, she allows her black professor to brutalize her in a scene that was going to require an NC-17 rating. Solondz used red boxes to block the images, but on the DVD you have the option of watching either the R or unrated version. This first story is pretty insightful and has good things to say about political correctness run amok. Vi (Selma Blair) runs into her professor in a bar and is subtly pressured into sex. Selma Blair does a good job of showing she doesn't really want to go through with it from the time they leave the bar until it's over, but she's under the spell of an accomplished celebrity in the writing world who's also her professor. While he's violating her, the professor makes her call him the dreaded "n-word" repeatedly, which is a power play by this potentially self-loathing black man as he angrily penetrates his pretty white student. After this encounter, Vi writes a story about it for her class, where her fellow students are shocked by the story. Instead of empathizing with the victim, they lash out at both her protagonist and Vi as the writer. How dare she use the "n-word" for shock value (this is Solondz taking a jab at his critics who constantly berate him for his use of shocking images). Also, her story is misogynistic, because the girl had several opportunities to not go through with it, but she did anyway. This is an outright punch in the face for the PC-police who see the world in their idealistic manner and not in the way it really is. These putzes usually have their heart in the right place, but they can often achieve the opposite effect of what they desire.

The second story is a meandering mess about a slacker high-schooler, an overbearing father, and a loser who decides to become a documentary director (obviously some level of a parody of Solondz himself). Based on his three films, Solondz sure seems to hate suburban America. In this movie he slams "privileged" white kids in both stories, and he hits hard at suburban families in the second. I can mention many little points he makes, but what's his overall point? I think it's that he's pissed at his detractors and wants to take a shot at them, but it's too bad he didn't do so in a more interesting way.

Summary by Bill Alward, August 5, 2002