Review

I don't know why audiences tolerate such photography: grimy, grainy, murky, under-exposed, ugly. Yes, it "matches the subject matter", in the same artless way that a shoe shop built in the shape of an enormous shoe matches ITS subject matter, but anyone can see that Solondz, like the architect, is cheating, and short of ideas.

He cheats in other ways, too. Perhaps stung by critics in the past, Solondz tries to anticipate every possible criticism one might make of his film and have it voiced by one of the characters IN the film. But he hasn't refuted his critics, merely beaten them to the punch. "Storytelling" IS contrived, unbelievable, mean-spirited, unfocused, misanthropic, racist and ugly; it DOES try to shock us simply for the sake of shocking us; Solondz DOES wallow in his own superiority to his characters; the dialogue IS flat-footed; the craftsmanship IS poor. I'll admit there's some wit and cleverness in the way Solondz weaves every single one of these complaints (and more besides) into the fabric of the film itself, but that's all the wit and cleverness there is; and this doesn't change the fact that the charges are - every single one of them except for the incomprehensible one levelled by Catherine against Vi's story in the first segment of the movie - true. And since they're true, this ought to be the end of the discussion. Yes, Todd, you HAVE made a miserably bad movie.