Love in the Time of Money

"Love in the Time of Money" is a deeply affecting arthouse picture, more remarkable for the incendiary performances of its cast than for its story. Although the script is quite exceptional--namely for its delectable, believably human, dialogue--the plot revolves around some rather familiar scenarios in contemporary (arthouse) cinema, such as the hardships faced by a fledgling prostitute, the deterioration of an emotionally cold marriage, and the desperation of a troubled corporate drone. It seems almost impossible not to conjure up comparisons to "Leaving Las Vegas," "Happiness," and other bleak narratives of the same ilk. Still, writer/director Peter Mattei draws upon his background in the theatre to create complex characters and elicit staggering performances from his entire cast. The visual style of the film offers additional intrigue--gorgeous close-ups and very non-traditional (yet meaningful and mood-enhancing) framing provide proof that not all features shot on digital video are obliged to be shaky, amateurish messes (or effects-reliant space epics, for that matter). A highly promising debut feature from an exciting new cinematic talent, "Love in the Time of Money" is a low-budget gem that obviously made good use of the time and money put into it, and is certainly worth yours.

As a fan of such films as "Mulholland Drive," "Memento," and "Before the Rain," I have a predilection for films which require one to piece together clues within the plot in order to distinguish true happenings from false. Initially, "Love in the Time of Money," did not strike me as this type of film, however while driving home, the words of Carol Kane's eccentric pig-tailed telephone clairvoyant came back to me. Kane's character was suggesting that perhaps in another dimension everything is changed by something so simple as a traffic light changing color a half-second earlier. This sensibility is the essence of Mattei's film, which follows the stories of interconnected people who unknowingly affect the fate of each succeeding character. The question which the film leaves one with is: How much of this story really happened?

There is a beautiful scene between Carol Kane, as an aged flamboyant clairvoyant who falls for the young urban Adonis, Adrien Grenier. Notable performances are also given by Steve Buscemi, who plays a struggling modern artist with quiet restraint, and by the gorgeous Rosario Dawson, who plays the conflicted muse of two men.

Petter Mattei's "Love in the Time of Money" is a visually stunning film to watch. Mr. Mattei offers us a vivid portrait about human relations. This is a movie that seems to be telling us what money, power and success do to people in the different situations we encounter.

This being a variation on the Arthur Schnitzler's play about the same theme, the director transfers the action to the present time New York where all these different characters meet and connect. Each one is connected in one way, or another to the next person, but no one seems to know the previous point of contact. Stylishly, the film has a sophisticated luxurious look. We are taken to see how these people live and the world they live in their own habitat.

The only thing one gets out of all these souls in the picture is the different stages of loneliness each one inhabits. A big city is not exactly the best place in which human relations find sincere fulfillment, as one discerns is the case with most of the people we encounter.

The acting is good under Mr. Mattei's direction. Steve Buscemi, Rosario Dawson, Carol Kane, Michael Imperioli, Adrian Grenier, and the rest of the talented cast, make these characters come alive.

We wish Mr. Mattei good luck and await anxiously for his next work.

This movie is best watched late at night (if you can stay awake). It is 90 minutes long where the first 85 minutes are an odd and eerie sequence of scenes that seem to transfer from one character to the next in what appear to be chronological order. Then in the last 5 minutes the movie's point unfolds, and you're left with an interesting puzzle that may make you want to see it again: was the movie forward chronological, reverse chronological, disconnected, or an endless paradox that is broken in the "end", which is were the movie began? Makes me wonder if the title is a riddle, too. The first 5 minutes is also important, if you're trying to close the loop.

I kind of enjoyed it until I nodded out on it. The structure is that of a skin flick. Characters are linked as in La Ronde or The Leopard Man. We meet Jill Hennesy, who is a class act, no doubt about it, and isn't getting along with her husband, and so makes it with a plumber or something. (Don't worry. The sex isn't explicit and there is no nudity.) It's marvelous, though, to see Jill Hennesy, the modelesque and feminist lawyer on "Law and Order" asking some surprisingly sensitive goon who is trying to help her hang up a painting to do her a favor -- "Make love to me." Okay.

She finds her husband, some kind of art dealer, not interested in her sexually. (!) She kisses him and tells him, "I'm horny," and he walks silently away and turns on his favorite jazz piano record, while she turns on every noisy appliance in their high-end apartment.

So why (you ask) is the husband indifferent to her charms? What's the matter with him. Is he gay? Well -- yes. Or rather bisexual, I suppose, since he married her in the first place. But hubby's real interest is in Steve Buscemi, an artist, and he comes on to Buscemi in a rather assertive manner and tries to kiss him. I don't know why. Buscemi is a great actor and a delight to see on the screen but, my God, he's got the canines of a vampire. Buscemi gently tells him, "I'm not gay." But then there is a love scene between them. I can't tell how explicit this was because I was covering my eyes and having an attack of homosexual anxiety.

Fortunately the next episode, involving Buscemi and Rosario Dawson, was enough to reassure me about my gender identity. Is there a greater constitutional puzzle than Rosario Dawson? Most people, at a glance, would classify her as African-American and yet she's a salad of racial genes, no more biologically "black" than "white" or "Hispanic". Something similar holds for people of mixed race like Halle Berrie and Mariah Carey. If you took all the genes of all the humans in the world and put them into a blender they would come out looking like these actresses (only more ordinary). They only belong to one or another racial classification because they -- and we -- say they do. This is known as "the social construction of reality." Now I'd like you all the read Berger and Luckman because there will be a quiz.

Next episode: Dawson has some sort of confrontation with her handsome white boyfriend. "We have to talk about this," she says. (I'm not making that up.) It was about this point in the movie that eurythmic breathing set in.

Anyway, you get the picture. One sexual episode leads to another, just as in a skin flick, except that here there is no nudity and any coitus we witness is simulated. In other words, in this movie, the emphasis is on the interludes between sexual encounters. And what are they like? They're like Woody Allen, that's what they're like. Ordinary little people doing ordinary little things that have to do with relationships. When Jill Hennesy and the picture-hanger are looking through a kitchen drawer for a hammer, they find there is no hammer. But Hennesy takes out one irrelevant item after another and dangles it before him? A box of staples. "No good?"

And at the bottom of the drawer, one of those flat plastic containers from a Chinese restaurant that everyone seems to save. "Soy sauce," says the plumber.

If it hand't been on TV at such a late hour I would probably have watched it through, although the ordinary little people, on screen or in real life, can be a little dull at time. Will Rosario Dawson reject Buscemi's appeal to let him paint her? I really didn't care except for the vague hope that we'd discover whether Rosario Dawson's figure was as mouthwatering as the rest of her.

An unambitious movie, but nice New York locations, and the acting is quite good really. It's Hennesy's best role at any rate.