Film Review: Storytelling (2001)
One of American independent film makers striving to inherit ther the critics’ darling and more snobbish audience’s favourite from Quentin Tarantino was Todd Solondz. His aroused a lot of interest in late 1990s with black comedies set in middle class milieu of his native New Jersey - Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness. The latter gained extra attention by his uncompromisingly candid treatment of taboo subjects like paedophilia which brought a lot of controversy. Similar approach was used in his next project, 2001 film Storytelling.
Solodnz originally envisioned it as anthology film made of three parts, but only two were introduced. The first, titled “Fiction”, is set in unnamed college and deals with Vi (played by Selma Blair), ambitious student in creative writing class taught by Mr. Scott (played by Robert Wisdom), highly respected Pulitzer Prize-winning African American author. Vi is having relationship with Marcus (played by Leo Fitzpatrick), student suffering from cerebral palsy, who wants Vi to present his own amateurish story to Mr. Scott. When she does it in front of the class, she is subjected to vicious criticism and, as a result, Marcus breaks up with her. Feeling hurt and lonely, Vi ends meeting Mr. Scott in a bar and ends up having sex with him.
The second story, titled “Non-fiction”, begins with aspiring documentary film maker Toby Oxman (played by Paul Giamatti) deciding to make a film about average American teenager. He subject matter is Scooby Livingston (played by Mark Webber), confused eldest son of the Jewish middle class family in New Jersey. Scooby spends all his time smoking cannabis and dreaming about career as talk show host, despite his father Marty (played by John Goodman) arranging to have him accepted to Princeton University through family connections. Middle son Brady (played by Noah Fleiss) is high school football jock concerned that his older brother might be gay, while the most intelligent and perceptive member of the family might be the youngest son Mikey (played by Jonathan Osser) whose attempts to relate to the family’s long suffering Salvadorean maid Consuelo (played by Lupe Ontiveros) starts the chain of events that would end in tragedy.
Like with Happiness, Solondz shows a lot of enthusiasm for showing the dark underbelly of American middle class and how its seemingly “normal” and “ordinary” hide utter dysfunctionality and darkest of perversions. This approach is here supplemented with bits of political commentary and Storytelling takes aim at some of sacred cows of “politically correct” Hollywood by dealing with issues of race, homosexuality, Holocaust, hypocrisy of “limousine liberals”and artists’ inability to convey their “proper” message to the audience. Solondz tries to do this through black humour, but his attempts are impeded at the very start because of the film’s structure. Like with many anthology films, some segments are better than others, and Storytelling isn’t an exception. “Fiction” is much shorter, more focused and, consequently, much better than “Non-Fiction” with the plot that meanders a lot, have too many cartoon-like characters and, at times, looks like uninspired parody of American Beauty. Attempt to bring some “meta” quality to this segment by satirising film making process makes Storytelling look too “clever” for its own good.
On the other hand, acting is very good. Actress who stands out among the rest of the cast is Selma Blair, who not only bravely takes clothes off in front of camera but takes part in unusually graphic and rough sex scene that caused all kinds for Solondz with MPAA censors. That scene, which is the most memorable part of Storytelling, created a lot of controversy even among usually pro-Solondz critics, but its main problem is that appears early and makes the rest of the film look lame in comparison. Although Solondz continued with his career, Storytelling, for all practical purposes, ended his chances of becoming new Tarantino.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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