A novelist and a corporate accountant conduct an affair over a period of several years, meeting only when they are each traveling for work in a city far from their homes. The film takes a minimalist approach: it consists entirely of scenes between the two of them in hotel rooms.
Cast
Marin Ireland as woman
Chris Messina as man
Robert Deamer as bartender
Brett Collier as bar patron
Production
Matt Ross' original idea was to make an intimate film about a relationship that would primarily focus on characters rather than plot. He stated that "the genesis of this movie came out of conversations I had with Chris Messina". After two weeks of rehearsal, filming began in Los Angeles and continued for a week or two. During this time Marin Ireland was flying back and forth between Los Angeles and New York, where she was filming the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce. The film was edited during the next couple of months and it was determined that certain additional scenes were needed to help further define the relationship between the two characters. These last remaining scenes were shot in New York over the course of about another week. Filming took in total about 18 days. Before and during the shooting of the film, Ross encouraged the actors to collaborate in its development, resulting in more than 49 hours of material, some of it scripted and some improvised. During postproduction, many different complete versions of film were created, with scenes in different orders, different plots, and different beginnings or endings, before one version was selected as final.
Critical reaction
Variety found the film neither dramatically nor intellectually stimulating despite good chemistry between the lead actors. Slant gave it 1.5 out of 4 stars. The Village Voice felt that the characters weren't properly fleshed out, and that the film's stripped-down, minimalist approach prevented a sense of getting insight into their lives. The New York Times was also unimpressed, praising the quality of the acting but noting a lack of any dramatic tension drama or passion in the characters' relationships with each other. Rotten Tomatoes has given the film a score of 38%. Metacritic has given it a score of 50%.
