A triptych of short films set on and immediately after 9/11, "A Broken Sole" is based on a stage production by its screenwriter and co-producer, Susan Charlotte. One hopes the material played on stage, because it dies on screen.
The film's director, Antony Marsellis, attempts visual lyricism with jump-cut montages and shots of twinned objects meant to evoke You Know What. But "A Broken Sole" consists mainly of boringly staged tableaux of self-involved yuppies and sentimentalized white working-class ethnics struggling to connect.
On 9/11 an opera-loving cobbler (Danny Aiello) recalls a painful World War II experience while fixing the broken sole (cough, cough) of a shoe belonging to a Columbia film professor (Judith Light) who witnessed that morning's catastrophe. In October 2001 a cranky, love-scarred real estate broker (Laila Robins) takes a cab ride with an eccentric, nosy driver (Bob Dishy) who weirdly over-enunciates while discussing his wife's diabetes and explaining why he declined his passenger's offer of fudge. In December 2001 an actress (Margaret Colin) and a philosophical dyslexic (John Shea) come to terms with their one-night stand while pondering picnic baskets, foreign films and palindromes.
Throughout, 9/11 doesn't so much loom over the proceedings as pop up now and again, to lend gravitas to characters and situations that wouldn't otherwise hold your attention.
