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Unmade Beds |
List Price: $19.95
Your Price: $17.96 |
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Reviews |
Features:
Description:
At first glance, Nicholas Barker's documentary about four New York City singles seeking partners through personal ads looks like it's trying to be a hipper, East Coast version of the Cameron Crowe hit Singles. The characters--two men and two women who play themselves--address the camera with candid, earthy, and bitter observations about the dating scene. And the film titillates the viewer with male and female nudity within the first five minutes. But where Singles was brightened by goofy humor and a hard-hitting soundtrack, Unmade Beds is weighed down by its characters' desperation and a mostly lackluster musical score. While two of the characters are looking for long-term relationships, the more interesting pair have shallower goals: Brenda, a shapely Italian woman in her 40s, wants a man who will pay her bills in exchange for "sex a couple of times a month, maybe four." Mikey, a 54-year-old self-described Jack Nicholson/Harvey Keitel type, is looking for babes to take home for the night and thinks nothing of walking out on a blind date who turns out to be a "mutt." Ordinarily, these are not people you would invite into your living room; however, Barker weaves their stories together in a way that provides sardonic and occasionally entertaining social commentary on the mating game. To emphasize the film's motif of voyeurism, the soliloquies are interspersed with frequent, almost painterly shots peeking through the windows of random apartment dwellers engaged in activities ranging from vacuuming to intercourse. These interludes are the most real and compelling moments in the film, and it is a shame that Barker does not let the viewer see more of these other, less desperate New Yorkers' lives. --Larisa Lomacky Moore
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