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LOVE IN THE TIME OF MONEY Send This Review to a Friend
It would be easy to recognize "Love in the Time of Money" as one more riff on Arthur Schnitzler's 1896 play "Reigen," better known here as the film version "La Ronde," even if it were not properly credited, which it is. There have been various film and stage adaptations, and here the setting is contemporary New York, but it is the same old yarn about the sexual relationship between two people and the chain that expands until we get back to the original source. Although the new film written and directed by Peter Mattei gets off to an absorbing and substantial start, it eventually tumbles downhill and grows tiresome.
The beginning is cruel, as Eddie, a carpenter, played by Domenick Lombardozzi, treats Greta, a prostitute, portrayed by Vera Farmiga, miserably after picking her up on a deserted street. The scene is quite explicit as the sex fizzles and he satisfies himself manually, then meanly refuses to pay her.
The next sequence is the best, thanks largely to the performance by Jill Hennessy as a messed up housewife who seduces Eddie when he comes to do a renovation job. There is pleasure seeing Hennessy in a role other than the part of prosecutor that I have enjoyed seeing her excel in so often in the TV series "Law and Order," and still do with the reruns. She shows a nice range here, acting very convincingly both in delineating the marital problems with her bisexual husband Robert and in the steamy sexuality with Eddie. Malcolm Gets is also excellent at the husband, and several nights after seeing him in this film I had the pleasure of viewing his enchanting, far different stage performance as the man who could walk through walls in the appealing but ill-fated Broadway import of the French musical "Amour."
The next sequence is also worthy, as we see Robert come on to Steve Buscemi as Martin, a painter. Buscemi is also intriguing to watch, as always. There's another plus in the portrayal of Anna, an art gallery receptionist by Rosario Dawson,who is absolutely beautiful. But the relationship between her and her persistent but rejected boyfriend Nick (Adrian Grenier) quickly grows boring, but not as boring as the one Nick develops with a much older psychic (played by Carol Kane) and the equally awful segment between the psychic and Michael Imperioli as a suicidal Wall Street trader and so on until we return to square one.
The writer-director is trying to say something about personal problems, alienation and values in the current New York environment, and he received an assist for his good intentions from the Sundance Filmmakers Lab. Mattei's use of digital video is along the digital experimental lines becoming popular today. But when it gets to the basics, digital or otherwise--the solidity of the stitched together stories--the final result is spotty. A THINKFilm release.
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