Trust the Man (R), directed by Bart Freundlich,
and Quinceañera (R), directed by
Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, both open
Friday, September 1, at the Little Theatres. Man also opens Friday at Regal Henrietta 18.
Save your breath for the good stuff
Thanks to a cast toplined by
respected thespians Julianne Moore, David Duchovny,
Billy Crudup, and Maggie Gyllenhaal,
it takes more than the usual amount of time to come to the realization that
writer/director Bart Freundlich’sTrust
the Man is in fact quite dreadful. If we’re to believe Moore when she
states that the film is a love letter to the West Village neighborhood that she
and husband Freundlich call home, then one can only
assume that it doubles as passive-aggressive hate mail to the self-absorbed jerks
that live in it.
Supposedly a romantic comedy (though strangely devoid of
either sentiment), Trust the Man focuses on a quartet of New Yorkers in romantic upheaval. Rebecca (Moore, Freedomland) is a
successful actress with a sarcastic stay-at-home husband named Tom (Duchovny, House of D)
who she claims is constantly pestering her for sex (the creepily wax-lipped
Garry Shandling cameos as their therapist).
Sportswriter Tobey (Crudup, Stage Beauty) is Rebecca’s brother and Tom’s best friend, and when
he’s not obsessing about death he’s vexing longtime girlfriend Elaine (Gyllenhaal, World
Trade Center) because she desperately wants him to grow up and impregnate
her yesterday.
If this is your first experience with talkies, you’ll be
totally shocked by the plot trajectory (as well as the audible dialogue!). All
four characters get offered options only slightly less palatable than
whatever’s waiting at home to nag them: Tom is tempted by the local barracuda,
Eva Mendes tries to seduce Tobey, some fawning actor slobbers all over Rebecca,
and Elaine dallies with a randomly European bore as well as a pompous musician
(indie mainstay James LeGros,
the highlight of this or any movie) whose skill at nibbling the watercress, as
the French say, turns out to be exaggerated.
Cue fart jokes, multiple shots to the groin, a private
argument that naturally everyone can hear, all followed by a denouement of
monumentally selfish proportions during a play at LincolnCenter.
Trust the Man was probably intended
as Freundlich’s crack at Woody Allen territory —
upper-middle-class New Yorkers dissecting their commitment issues — but he
barely reaches the Ed Burns echelon. His female characters are shrill harpies
with truly valid concerns, while the men of the movie are overgrown children
suffering from serious mental problems that are easily solved by a montage.
This is Freundlich’s third awful film, following the
overrated Myth of Fingerprints and
the little-seen World Traveler.
Unfortunately, it’s only his fourth filmmaking effort. Does the three-strike
rule apply in Hollywood?
Why not?
I’ve never been a big Julianne Moore fan (and I’m certainly
in no danger of starting now), but Duchovny, Crudup, and Gyllenhaal are all
such likeable actors that it’s frustrating to see them hindered by the
formulaic and vaguely insulting script. If there’s an actual star of the Trust the Manit’sManhattan
itself, elegantly shot by crackerjack cinematographer Tim Orr, who can
typically be found infusing unlikely beauty into filmmaker David Gordon Green’s
ramshackle South. Orr is a long way from home. Too bad it wasn’t worth the
trip.
Magdalena is in preparations for her quinceañera,
the traditional rite of passage that takes place on a young Latina’s 15th birthday, but it’s unclear for
how long the ritual has called for a stretch Hummer. It’s also not customary
for the birthday girl to be a pregnant virgin, but that’s what happens in Quinceañera, a clumsy drama written and directed by
Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, the men who
brought you The Fluffer.
After the requisite shunning by her minister father,
Magdalena (the appealing Emily Rios), goes to live with her kindly Uncle Tomas
(ChaloGonzález, who made
his film debut in Peckinpah’sThe Wild Bunch), a Yoda-like street vendor
in the EchoPark neighborhood. Tomas has also taken
in Magdalena’s cousin Carlos (the wooden Jesse
Garcia), rejected by his family because he’s gay. Carlos gets entangled with
their landlords, a gay couple with a taste for “super-hot cholo,”
while Magdalena tries to convince everyone of
her virtue despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Quinceañera is also ostensibly a mash note to its architects’ stomping grounds, but it
smacks more of white liberal guilt than anything, seemingly apologizing for
driving Latinos out of EchoPark as well as the gay
community’s objectifying of young Latino males. The film’s heart is in the
right place, though the execution is heavy-handed and the resolution is somehow
both tidy and nonexistent. But Quinceañera won both the Dramatic Audience Award and Grand
Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, so what do I know?
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2006.
