Frank Ochieng is a guest critic who also writes reviews for his own personal website, located here.

To become a Guest Critic for CINEMA 2000, please notify David Keyes.

Review Uploaded
12/02/02

Starring: Steve Buscemi, Vera Farmiga, Rosario Dawson, Domenick Lombardozzi, Jill Hennessy, Malcolm Gets, Michael Imperioli, Carol Kane, Adrian Grenier
Directed by: Peter Mattei

Rating: ** stars (out of 4 stars)

It’s hard to distinguish between the movers and shakers in writer-director Peter Mattei’s convoluted and sketchy romancer Love in the Time of Money. The first-time filmmaker supplies the steady dose of pathos designed to give credence to this ragtag drama but there’s something about this vehicle that leaves one very cold. At times Mattei’s pedestrian narrative is utterly baffling in using strung along vignettes in an attempt to showcase a handful of emotionally-starved New Yorkers trying their best to connect intimately to strangers while an alienating force hovers over their everyday complex lives. Mattei’s storytelling is intermittingly erratic and borders on the gimmicky side of sympathetic Moviemaking 101. The purpose is to convey the loneliness and despair that these poor souls endure using the harsh and vast backdrop of a kinetic and impersonal late ‘90s New York City that doesn’t stand still for anybody’s lingering desperation. Mattei does manage to corral some mighty impressive performers headed up by the reliable Mr. Indie Player himself Steve Buscemi but ultimately Love in the Time of Money stalls in its clumsy and mundane portrait of bitterness and exasperation.

The vicious circle is such that each needy human encounter begets another one in this urban fable of misery loving any company. The participants, as Mattei methodically points out, are all wounded and weary and looking to cling onto anyone or anything that can soften a hardened, unfulfilled heart. It goes without saying that the characters here are lacking self-assurance and missing that spark needed to ignite their personal and financial stagnation. And so the chain of fools are forcibly linked to one another with mixed results.

A disillusioned hooker (Vera Farmiga) doesn’t have much of a rewarding exchange with a demanding contractor (Domenick Lombardozzi) who then turns around and plays footsies with someone else’s wealthy but unsatisfied lush of a wife (Jill Hennessy from NBC-TV’s Crossing Jordan). Her husband (Malcolm Gets) wants to practice his provocative strokes with an aimless painter (Steve Buscemi) who in return has an eye for a gallery receptionist (Rosario Dawson, The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Men in Black II). Of course her boyfriend (Adrian Grenier) is constantly fussing with Dawson’s hot-looking receptionist thus securing the attention of Buscemi’s bugged-eyed painter. All this will eventually result in the audience being driven back to the hooker with heart of rusty gold to complete the sordid circle of conflict.

Love in the Time of Money feels like some tawdry experimentation gone berserk. Despite the risqué themes involved, the movie never is able to stimulate the proceedings beyond the turgid and trivial premise of malcontents trying to find peace of mind amid the sense of loss they seem to suffer from. Mattei replenishes this moping method-acting melodrama with heavy-handed dialogue that reinforce some of the characters’ flaws as lethargic lonely heart candidates. The film has more of a cockeyed tinge to it as opposed to a calculating one that would have supplied this flat display with more plausible afterthought. There are some selective performances worth noting, particularly Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning actress Carol Kane as a loony phone psychic looking to score points with a down-in-the-dumps twentysomething. But this ensemble piece, sad to say, is relentlessly stuck in neutral gear.

All in all, Mattei’s underdeveloped effort here is nothing but a convenient conveyor belt of brooding personalities that parade about as if they were coming back from Stock Character camp (check out The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli as a suicidal financer or the aforementioned prototype of Farmiga’s hooker, Gets’ sexually confused spouse or Hennessey’s drunken and bored soulmate, etc.) What could have been a lyrical landscape of absent affection and other compelling components of horrifying angst merely ends up as a drowsy drama infatuated by its own pretentious self-examination.

So go ahead and save your love-if not your precious time and money-for a project worth embracing that won’t blow dense smoke up your proverbial sentimental chimney.