Friday, February 13
Unmade Beds
dir. Nicholas Barker, USA 1998

Brenda, sexy Italian, buxom, blond, 40s, seeks man to give her money and go away.
Michael, 40, 5-4, graying temples, seeks marriage, fears that "if I die a bachelor, all I will leave behind me is stuff."
Aimee, 28, 225 pounds, blond, wants husband, children; has job, health benefits.
Mikey, 50-ish, screenwriter, doesn't date mutts: "I remember making love to three gorgeous women in 24 hours in 1974. One of those women would still be with me today if I was a faithful kind of a guy."

Those are the four protagonists in Nicholas Barker's Unmade Beds, a film that walks and talks like a documentary but is, I am assured, entirely scripted. Barker found his subjects by answering 400 personal ads in New York and screening the advertisers until he had found four who projected humor, personality and bleak desperation. [...]

All of these people use their real names in the movie. Whether we are seeing their real lives is a good question. This is not cinema verite; some scenes took 10 takes. "The movie contains a lot of truth," Barker told an audience at this year's Toronto Film Festival, "but precious little reality." - Roger Ebert

Unmade Beds is a uniquely compassionate and perceptive film, which traces the lives of four New Yorkers in search of love and companionship. The director, who accidentally holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology, digs deep into his characters' emotional universe. His touch is both sad and gentle, revealing his protagonists' fragile humanity and desperation in the face of post-industrial urban anonymity. If you ever felt lonely or abandoned or devoid of individuality in the world of manufactured spaces and relationships, you won¹t be able to resist the charm of this genuinely humane movie. - Maxim Matusevich