Blu-ray Review: Changing Lanes (2002)

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Obviously it’s an understatement to say that life is full of contradictions but an especially challenging one is trying to figure out when to remain still and when to fight back.

It’s a lesson that’s extraordinarily hard to pass on to the next generation—wanting to ensure that they don’t become violent bullies but at the same time (or at least it my point-of-view) reminding them that if they are being struck, it’s definitely okay to stand up for themselves. Provided, that is, that any physical response they make to defend themselves is purely in self defense. But, as we all know when tempers flare-- lines get crossed fast and the victim can become a bully shortly after the first punch is thrown.



Filmmaker Roger Michell’s Changing Lanes—a cinematic representation of an angry moral minefield—raises all of these contradictions and questions shortly after the film begins when two men with completely different backgrounds (both undergoing an overwhelming amount of stress) collide in a traffic accident during the a.m. rush hour on New York’s FDR drive.



Intriguingly, we discover that both men are on their way to settle legal situations. On the one hand we have Samuel L. Jackson as a recovering alcoholic Doyle Gipson who's preparing for his last plea to the family court judge to receive visitation rights to his children. And to balance out the equation, Gipson is matched with Ben Affleck’s smooth-talking yuppie Gavin Banek who is on his way to present an important series of documents in an ethically shady case that’s netted his law firm a ridiculous sum of money.



While it’s Affleck’s speeding Banek that crashes into Gipson, the two begin go through all of the motions they’re supposed to as responsible citizens by trading insurance information and ensuring the other person is okay. However, while Gipson wants to do everything by the book—Banek’s patience wears thin after a few seconds of requisite cordiality before his privileged sense of upper class entitlement and legal ease takes over. After he tries buy off Gipson with a blank check for the damage done to his vehicle, he feels his work is done and-- ignoring Gipson's request for a ride-- Banek leaves the scene of the accident with the thoughtless comment, “better luck next time.”



Although most audience members by now would simply assume that Banek is the villain and Gipson the unlucky hero—both men prove in their subsequent responses over the course of a very long, sinister Good Friday that they’re more than willing to bully and push back. And in doing so, each one ratchets up the level of pain in actions that go well beyond self defense into the realm of deadly serious attacks.

To their credit-- especially since the film is already a bit overly exaggerated and heavy-handed as it is-- filmmaker Michell and his screenwriters Chap Taylor and The Player scribe Michael Tolkin genuinely make an effort to sidestep any major “black and white” racial overtones, aside from one killer scene where Jackson gets the chance to deliver one of his trademark long monologues to two racist strangers while discussing his idea of a perfect Tiger Woods ad.

Yet—and despite the fact that from the earliest scenes the characters are presented on the surface as generic stereotypes (of both “race” and “class”)—Affleck and Jackson bring a great amount of layers to the roles that find them playing decidedly against type. To this end in both the press notes and behind-the-scenes documentaries, the former acknowledged he’d never had the opportunity to really act prior to this film (following Pearl Harbor up with Lanes) and the latter enjoyed the opportunity to play an uncool, unhip square for once.

However, the racial inequities, class struggles, religious symbolism of Good Friday and idea that both men were different levels of ethically ticking time bombs are laced throughout. Although on the surface they appear to have nothing in common—on that particular day when their vehicles and lives intersected and we realize they had an obscene amount to lose, their similar natures come out. As a result, they go into urban warfare using everything at their disposal when Banek tries to manipulate Gipson into giving back an important legal file he accidentally left in his hurried escape from the traffic accident and is too impatient to just meet up and talk things out.



However, life in an untouchable skyscraper gives Banek the edge to seriously destroy at will in an effort to save his career, marriage, and reputation when the file isn’t immediately returned. And although his former lover and colleague (Toni Collette) stars as his “conscience,” she also provides him with the contact information of a man (Dylan Baker) who can speed up the recovery process by taking a white-collar criminal approach to ruining Gipson.



It’s once this particular cyber attack is leveled in destroying Gipson financially that the film (which had already been moving from angry towards ferocious) becomes downright psychopathic and mean-spirited as a sort of twenty-first century version of Falling Down. And accordingly, the men take their frustrations out on each other in the most reprehensible of ways involving frightening Gipson’s children and nearly killing Banek on the road.

At its surface, of course, it's meant to illustrate the lesson that we never know exactly what’s going on in another human being’s life at any given moment. Yet, what started as an ingenious if obviously magnified and slightly dubious thriller of rage-fueled revenge gone wild instead falters given the exaggerated circumstances of the men and consequently turns into an absolutely repugnant depiction of attack and counter-attack run amok.



However, this being said, Lanes was critically lauded upon its initial release for its provocative approach and unabashed depiction of the very worst urges lurking in the hearts of men. Despite this, I feel pretty confident in the assumption that the film would not have been nearly as well received if Michell and his writers hadn’t tacked on a protracted penance filled ending which simply appears out of nowhere like a speeding car as the filmmaker’s attempt to crash some semblance of hope into the narrative.



Bolstered by a brilliant concept and terrific performances—especially by Jackson, Collette, and Sydney Pollack as Affleck’s boss and father in law—the film manages to push well past plausibility and audience empathy for the characters in its grueling final act in its transformations of two ordinary men who become the worst of bullies, never sure if and when they should step back and call a truce or just pummel each other beyond recognition.



And it’s in this strange attempt at marrying these two conclusions after we’ve just experienced one horrific event after another to the point that we no longer care about Banek or Gipson (or honestly 90% of the film’s cast) that made me question the filmmakers motive for Lanes as anything more than just in the end a clunky grown-up version of an after-school special.



Aside from the heavy-handed Good Friday religious symbolism that pervades, the work had enormous potential as a definite morality play set in contemporary America. In fact, seeing the film again now in a world where it seems that every week another citizen goes off the deep end and causes violent chaos in a gory shoot-out, it’s even timelier today than it was in 2002.

However, simplicity instead of exaggeration should’ve been the goal of those involved to try and make the two characters even remotely relatable or worth the investment, in lieu of depositing them in elaborate “schemes” and only-in-Hollywood plot points.



For this is especially the case as it concludes disappointingly with a reaffirmation of the same two stereotypes of the men that had opened the picture rather than making us feel that-- despite the excellent turns of the men portraying them-- Banek and Gipson had really changed all that much after all. Thus, Lane’s “happy ending” is damned in the end because it isn’t genuinely earned in the least as anything over than a convenient screenwriting contrivance.

With the theatrical trailer being the only special feature upgraded to high definition, we’re treated to the familiar yet interesting behind-the-scenes making-of-featurettes the include interviews with the cast and crew, an extended scene and deleted ones. Likewise, it contains a feature length commentary track by the director who-- after Lanes-- moved his career into far creepier territory with the eerie Enduring Love and excellent yet disturbing film The Mother (both of which starred the man who would become James Bond a.k.a. Daniel Craig).

Of particular interest to fellow writers would be the “Writer’s Perspective” extra that includes some insights from Michael Tolkin who was brought into work on the completed screenplay (always a sign that Wonder Boys, The Hours, and No Country for Old Men super producer Scott Rudin knew it was in trouble at the structural stage).

The Blu-ray itself is of excellent quality with first-rate sound throughout in one of the best Paramount soundtracks included on their slate of impressive 5/19 Blu-ray releases (that also included 3 Days of the Condor, Paycheck, Enemy at the Gates, and The Machinist) and a very sharply defined visual presentation that adds extra clarity to some of the tight, boxed-in shots, rapid-cuts, and darkly lit scenes.

Heightening that sense of feeling like a caged claustrophobic victim-- the Blu-ray completely pulls you in with an exceptional transfer of the unique production design and visual style, even if at times you'll have to remind yourself that there's no one you can push back amidst the chaos since after all, it's only just a film.

Blu-ray Review: 3 Days of the Condor (1975)

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A.K.A. Three Days of the Condor

After hitting the street on 5/19, three new paranoid thriller Blu-ray releases from Paramount Home Entertainment have definitely found this reviewer looking over her shoulder over the course of a week and a half.

Gripping and diverse, the titles have arrived in tandem with the angry, morally thought-provoking twenty-first century Falling Down inspired Changing Lanes and the underrated war film Enemy at the Gates. And to top off that slate of movies, Warner Brothers managed to tie right into the theme with a Deluxe Edition DVD and Blu-ray of Falling Down hitting shelves this week as well.

However, for the most part it's been an in-depth, two week long look at cinematic onscreen paranoia lately at Film Intuition via three very different Hitchcockian influenced works. Juggling unreliable narrators with unbelievable situations and undeniable tension, we've explored 'em all in the form of Sydney Pollack's fresh-after-Watergate classic 3 Days of the Condor, John Woo's North By Northwest inspired action laced update of a Philip K. Dick story in Paycheck, and a haunting turn by Christian Bale as an emaciated insomniac in Brad Anderson's cult favorite The Machinist.

Although before we settle into the rest, we'll go back in time to the cold war era for 3 Days of the Condor which-- going completely against the grain-- opted not to use Russia as a backdrop but instead set the action right here in the United States.

While some people say that they're saving up for a rainy day, it's precisely a rainy day that ends up saving Robert Redford from getting massacred along with the rest of his coworkers in a lunchtime raid at their office after only a few minutes into The Way We Were and Jeremiah Johnson director Sydney Pollack's fast-moving thriller.

Working as a reader in the purposely dully named American Literary Historical Society-- Redford's Joseph Turner breaks protocol at what is in reality a governmental agency "front" by sneaking out the back to cut a few rain soaked blocks off his trip to bring back lunch. Missing from the raid that's foreshadowed in an eerie sequence as we watch our villain flip through photographs of the workers (including Redford's which conspicuously looks like a dreamy headshot), Turner we soon ascertain is both the last and only man from his tiny group left standing once the bullets fly.

So in a cross between saving his life for a rainy day and/or being literally "out to lunch" in the type of odd coincidence his character would've looked for by scouring texts of all types as a "code-breaker" of sorts-- reading everything he can for patterns or dangerous information-- suddenly the nerdy Dick Tracy loving avid comic book enthusiast Joseph Turner realizes he needs to abandon the librarian pretense and go into spy mode.



The only thing is, the admittedly clumsy and awkward Turner has never really gone into spy mode before and now, armed only with a tiny pistol he secured from the desk of the receptionist, Joseph Turner is easily outnumbered and outgunned. Obviously, we assume (as does Turner) that the government must have all kinds of "contingency plans" that will fall into place and he dutifully phones in, revealing his code name of Condor.

However, and much to the late great Sydney Pollack's credit in not revealing the link to the CIA by name until almost thirty minutes into the movie, the tension and uncertainty mounts as Turner grows increasingly suspicious. And when additional gunplay ensues, he realizes he has no idea where to turn since as the movie's dynamite tagline promises, "in the next seventy-two hours almost everyone he trusts will try to kill him."

Logically, he decides the next best move would be to steer clear of old surroundings and associates so he randomly abducts the next woman with whom he comes into contact-- Faye Dunaway's game Kathy Hale-- and the two hide out at her apartment to sort things out.



Obviously since he's the man wielding the gun, Kathy tries to play along but Turner-- relieved to have someone to speak with earnestly confesses everything in an attempt to persuade her that he is who he says he is and not a cold-blooded criminal.

Fortunately Dunaway's character is penned as anything but a damsel in distress and, right in line with her string of memorable work of this era in films including Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and Network-- she manages to get more mileage than we'd expect out of her role as unwitting and underwritten romantic sidekick and lonely girl photographer.

Although, of course the two do end up predictably becoming romantically involved (it's Dunaway and Redford in 1975-- what are they not going to hook up onscreen?!), the immediacy in which the two hit the sack that very night still feels like an intensely false note amidst the otherwise rhythmic pacing of arty and uncharacteristically roughly five-second long "shots" between cuts and the intelligent screenplay.

In fact, the dubious nature of their coupling was one of the plot points debated in the second sexiest scene (the first being the intercut hotel bar and room sequence) in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight in which Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney-- finding themselves in a similar situation-- chat about old movies while he holds her hostage in the trunk of a car.

Yet, most likely the reason for this largely unsuccessful leap to try and make us suspend our disbelief is one that-- similar to some of the clunky plot points of Turner's less-than-bright decisions and his near instantaneous transformation from a klutz to well, Dick Tracy-- can easily be attributed to the fact that Pollack's Condor was an adaptation of a novel set over the course of six instead of three days.

By speeding up the action to fit the running time and doing away with the exposition to make the film more of an action movie with a clearer through-line that will fall just under one hundred and twenty minutes, the film gets away with a lot of things that on the whole it probably wouldn't have by presenting them to us so quickly.

Despite some of the confusion and the sort of vague idea of a CIA within a CIA (which as Ebert noted, following Watergate was entirely plausible and it's indeed one that remains so in our Bourne Identity era) all tangled up in a paranoid plot that at times feels like a Hitchcockian MacGuffin that we can't quite understand until the film's final segment-- it works best as a cat and mouse thriller as Redford fights to stay alive.

With an incredible turn by Max von Sydow as one of the many dangerous "company" types and/or hired guns out to get Turner, Condor is filled with more than few scenes sure to get your heart rate going that are elevated by a great antihero '70s air about the film that fills it with just the right amount of doom lurking ahead long after the credits roll.

Thus, it's easy to just go ahead and forget some of the warning bells sounding in your brain like the ludicrous decision the main characters make to drive the same vehicle throughout even though the government knows it well and just join the chase in another excellent and exciting effort by frequent collaborators Pollack and Redford. Additionally, it's one that reminds you that it's always a good idea to go for a walk in the rain... just make sure you bring an umbrella and always remember your code name.

New on DVD for the Week of 9/14

While there are plenty new titles hitting the shelves with a majority arriving just in time for you to catch up on all of your favorite television shows (including several sets that I haven't yet reviewed), here's a list of the items I was able to pre-screen for you. While several are above average and I urge everyone to check out Young At Heart, my personal choice for the week is the brilliant British import First Among Equals, hitting the states courtesy of Acorn Media.

And although, no doubt it will be the toughest one to come by, it's one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend purchasing immediately! As always, click on the links for the reviews and enjoy.

And stay tuned as I update the site with new arrivals each and every week. Additionally, since I'm often asked why I don't list every release or where they can be found, you can also browse the Amazon selections below for un-reviewed titles.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Alvinnn!!! Edition

Blood Simple (note: film review, not DVD edition review)

Dirty Sexy Money-- The Complete First Season Exposed

First Among Equals

Made of Honor (pictured above)

My Little Pony: The World's Biggest Tea Party

Young At Heart

Recount

Director:
Jay Roach

While going through one another’s belongs in The Breakfast Club, a fellow student asks the nerdy “brain” (Anthony Michael Hall) why he would need a fake I.D., to which he replies so that he can vote. Although I was never the fake I.D. type, as a fellow uncool “brain” who started college at sixteen, I could definitely relate to Anthony Michael Hall’s wish and was less excited by the possibility of getting into bars or dance clubs and far more thrilled to finally have a voice in the American democracy when I turned eighteen. You can guess how popular this made me with my peers, which is probably the biggest reason that—even to this day—the average age of most of my friends is at least a full decade my senior. Despite placing the former, tragically deceased professor turned Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone on my personal political pedestal and being from the state where the most notable election was for an old friend’s dad-- Jesse Ventura, the registered independent former wrestler turned Minnesota governor-- the first election I was old enough to participate in was the 2000 presidential election.

I remember it like it was yesterday—knowing full well, I’d be leaving the cool Midwest temperatures to visit my grandparents in the state of Arizona which months later would become my home, I went down to City Hall in person to vote for Vice President Al Gore, having the strangest but surest inkling not to trust the idea of an absentee ballot by mail. It turned out to not only be a good decision but obviously the least of my worries when I sat on the edge of my seat well into the evening of the November 7, 2000 election. Certain that sooner or later the media-- and especially Dan Rather who by about ten p.m. was running out of an increasingly bizarre string of the strangest metaphors one could ever muster-- would finally stop “flip-flopping” their decision over who had won Florida similar to the way the news attacked candidates for “flip-flopping” on an issue, I kept waiting to hear the final word on who would be the next Commander-in-Chief.

And then it continued on well into the night until George W. Bush seemed to be the winner but just when we thought it was over, the next morning it continued again and rumors started pouring in with new phrases such as "butterfly ballots," “hanging chads,” and outcries of elderly and African-American voter suppression beginning to cloud over the election, leaving unprecedented chaos, mounting suspicion, outrageous disbelief, and disaster in its wake over the next several weeks until Florida’s Secretary of State Katherine Harris began setting in motion the events that helped push the Supreme Court to uphold Florida’s ruling and serve up the White House to then Governor George W. Bush. And of course-- no matter which party you belong to—we all know how well that turned out! Still, now with the benefit of hindsight, it makes us infinitely aware in a post 9/11 world, that the pre 9/11 election was one of the most important on record.

Additionally what we didn’t know perhaps-- or what only some of us true news junkies who lived for the latest facts and figures back in 2000 with CNN blaring in the background and newspapers stockpiling on our coffee tables-- is the stuff of political infamy and it makes for highly compelling fodder in HBO’s latest made for premium cable film Recount. After the film’s producer, the recently deceased director Sydney Pollack found his health failing and therefore couldn’t helm the ambitious project, Meet the Parents and Austin Powers director Jay Roach stepped in, which despite seeming like an incongruous choice, turned out to offer the film just the right tongue-in-cheek, awkward, hilariously strange but unfortunately true tone he'd poured into the similarly pitched festival of discomfort, Meet the Parents.

An insider’s look at the events from the point-of-view primarily of one of Gore’s lead strategists, Ron Klain (Kevin Spacey), we follow Ron along with other Gore staffers Denis Leary’s Michael Whouley, and later their lawyer David Boies (Ed Begley Jr.) as they try to get to the bottom of just what went wrong in Florida. Using every legal recourse, they try to demand first a machine and then hand recount of the questionable butterfly ballots which found several elderly Democrats mistakenly voting for Pat Buchanan (who even admitted that his large number of votes must have been an error), and navigate the conflicting rules and biases from one Florida county to the next over how ballots with “dimpled” chads would be handled, while researching questions about military and absentee ballot legitimacy, a highly inaccurate count of voters turned away from the polls for having names similar to those of convicted felons, and voting machines that offer a different read every time. Of course, presiding over the chaos is the overly made-up and-- as the film illustrates-- the cheerleader puppet Harris (wonderfully played by Laura Dern) who seems so unfit for her position that she’s eager to not only seek advice from either the bible or any of Bush’s people including Tom Wilkinson’s James Baker and Bob Balaban’s Ben Ginsberg, but prefers to hide behind an unchangeable recount deadline unless of course—per her most cited alibi-- a hurricane hits the state of Florida.

While admittedly slanted to the left, perhaps the most fascinating thing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls star turned scripter Danny Strong’s intelligent first time screenplay is the way that it manages to illustrate all of the madness and every possible solution including the arguments of both sides. Instead of narrowly offering one specifically definitive view of the situation or even by completely demonizing the questionable motives and back-room deal-making Republicans or celebrating the heroic underdog Democrats, Strong seems to argue that the entire process is filled with potential flaws with neither the hand count or machine count being ideal, showing the equal probability for both human and mechanical errors. And of course, all this is the key to stimulating excellent audience debate... and just think, Roach and Strong didn’t even begin to address the validity and wisdom of the electoral college! Although, as a passionate voter looking eagerly forward to casting a vote this upcoming November, I'm hopeful that this topic won't be explored in a sequel... now only if I could ensure the ballot, the chad, and the machine will read my choice for the Democratic nominee correctly.

Movie Review: Made of Honor (2008)

Director: Paul Weiland

Now Available on DVD & Blu-ray

Filmgoers did a double take in the 1990s when, in trading in a ten gallon hat and cowboy boots for a Mets cap and sneakers, Billy Crystal became a short comedian in the saddle in City Slickers. As unlikely as that image seemed at the time, it made far more sense to see Crystal in cowboy mode in director Paul Weiland’s sequel City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly’s Gold and much less sense when Grey’s Anatomy doc McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) decides to stop a wedding by commandeering a horse in Weiland’s latest release Made of Honor. While it’s par for the romantic comedy course to end genre offerings with either the hero or heroine physically chasing down their love via taxis, airplanes, bicycles, etc. and the director at least gets credit for trying to add whimsy to the mix, for Honor's finale, coming off the heels of several clichés in a row, the only way the sequence would have seemed original is if suddenly Crystal had popped up on the screen looking for another western adventure.

Despite this, I was pleasantly surprised by the first hour of the film, which, similar to the other recent lackluster romantic comedy, What Happens in Vegas, reels us in with enough high energy and laughs to keep us interested until they realize we’ve taken the bait, and then instead of continuing to fish, the filmmakers slowly drop us further into the lake. This being said and intriguingly for someone who has never seen an entire episode of Grey’s Anatomy, I was more taken in by Made than Vegas, perhaps due to the sheer charm of the two affable leads played by the aforementioned Dempsey as well as the terrific Michelle Monaghan who’d first impressed me a few years back in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Similar to her Kiss costar Robert Downey Jr., the visible roughly decade age difference between Monaghan and Dempsey seems overly conspicuous when we realize that (again like Kiss) they’re playing former classmates, but because they seem to genuinely spark with one another, it’s easy to forgive.

Opening in 1998 at Cornell University, the philandering ladies man senior student Tom (Dempsey) meets cute with worldly, mature freshman Hannah (Monaghan) by mistaking her bed for that of her skanky roommate. Impervious to his unoriginal advances, Tom’s flirtation turns to fascination when the refreshingly honest Hannah calls him on his game and we cut to the duo ten years later as they’ve become best friends in a slightly codependent relationship-- more intimate than most marriages, yet completely platonic as a heterosexual version of Will and Grace.

Now in contemporary New York and having become successfully wealthy after inventing a “coffee collar,” man-whore Tom still chases anything in a skirt despite keeping commitment at bay while ridiculously adhering to lecherous self-imposed rules. And luckily for Tom, his favorite girl Friday, the art restorer Hannah seems all too happy to be his backup date when it matters most such as attending the sixth wedding of his father (a hilarious Sydney Pollack).

Although unlike Will and Grace yet predictably as research indicates that a majority of friendships contain some level of attraction, we suspect that Monaghan may want more out of her relationship. However a possibly awkward conversation is cut short when she journeys to Scotland for a six week work trip. Unsurprisingly, absence makes Tom’s heart grow fonder when he realizes that the bimbos he beds just don't interest him as much as Hannah but he’s in for a rude awakening when she returns engaged following a whirlwind “Bronte” inspired courtship with the unspeakably dull yet attractive Colin (Kevin McKidd). When Tom is asked to serve as Hannah’s "Moh" (Maid of Honor), his friends encourage him to sabotage the event from inside but when the annoyingly flawless Colin can’t be knocked from Hannah’s pedestal, Tom decides instead to leave character attacks out of the mix and try to prove to his best friend that he’s the one who is Made of Honor.

While less enjoyable than the unchallenging yet adorable Wedding Planner yet far better than Julia Roberts’s overwhelmingly mean-spirited My Best Friend’s Wedding, Honor benefits from its gender reversal twist. Unfortunately, as soon as the film substitutes its New York setting for fairy tale Scotland as the wedding draws nearer, the brains of the screenwriters must have fallen asleep as the film continues in auto-pilot, predictably hitting turbulence and cheap laughs for the rest of what felt like an overwhelmingly bloated running time (yet in reality was just 101 minutes).

Still, it's not as horrid as most critics would have you believe and the two actors try to get as much mileage out of the material and their underwritten, bland characters as they can and it’s half successful, until-- and echoing the predictable conclusion-- all the stops (and horses) are pulled to try and ruin things from turning “happily ever after.”

Avenue Montaigne

Director: Daniele Thompson

Co-written with and starring the director’s son Christopher Thompson, Jet Lag director Daniele Thompson’s latest French confection celebrates Parisian bohemian artists, actors, pianists and those who make their living based solely on their creative output. When Jessica (Cecile De France of The Spanish Apartment) leaves the elderly grandmother who raised her contented in senior housing, Jessica accepts a job at a Parisian café, after being told that she’s working on a trial basis since they only hire male waiters. In her postion, Jessica becomes the confidant, fan and protector of her many patrons including Catherine, a soap opera actress starring in a Feydeau play across the street and struggling to land a movie deal playing Simone de Beauvoir for director Brian Sobinski (Sydney Pollack, also a producer on Montaigne and playing a fictitious version of himself). For her portrayal of Catherine, the neurotic actress facing middle age and professional crisis, Valerie Lemercier received a Cesar award in her native France. Beautifully shot ensemble piece in the vein of Robert Altman, although without the emotional depth or investment, it’s an amusing diversion but there are far superior French character pieces such as Va Savoir that would make for a more satisfying viewing as about midway through Avenue Montaigne, I began to realize just how little I cared about any of the characters involved. While Jessica is our tour guide and serves as a near stand in for the viewer in observing the high-strung arts world, too little back-story was provided for her character including an unbelievable romance between her and Christopher Thompson. We long for more scenes with some of the other supporting players, most notably Albert Dupontel in a fascinating study of an acclaimed international pianist who is tired of his breakneck schedule and lack of passion playing for stuffy audiences who wants to walk away from it all, play in hospitals and live in the country. An entire film could’ve been made simply about the pianist but instead, the film is uneven and bogged down by characters barely understood by viewers—an admirable attempt to depict Parisian artists in their habitat but one that definitely fell short of its promise.