Goodbye To All That
Goodbye to All That
Our society’s decline in face-to-face communication reaches new lows when Annie (Melanie Lynskey) employs her therapist to inform husband Otto (Paul Schneider) that she’s filed for divorce. She never let on and he never had a clue. Afterward, Otto tries to find happiness through a series of encounters with daft, disconnected women. Schneider plays Otto as an affable doofus (who manages to be the sanest person in the room) in this droll, endearing comedy.
3 Hearts
Marc (Benoit Poelvoorde) is a frustrated traveling businessman who encounters Sylvie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) on the street in a provincial town after missing the last train. They share conversation, cigarettes and the sunrise, agreeing to meet again in Paris. But plans go awry. The title of French director Benoit Jacquot’s beautifully acted film indicates the emotional complications to follow in a story whose premise is that some people are drawn together inevitably through apparently random encounters.
The Mean Season
Kurt Russell plays a rumpled journalist and cynic with a conscience, drawn into queasy complicity with a serial killer who has chosen him as his “conduit.” The Mean Season (1985) moves at a snappy pace and echoes film noir with its hard-bitten cops and newsroom setting. Mariel Hemmingway costars as Russell’s love interest. Classic line (from the killer’s mouth): “It’s a lot easier to find a victim than to find a listener.”
