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REEL TO REAL
by Toni Pizanie
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

Your Friends & Neighbors

Gramercy Pictures' presents the second feature film by Neil LaBute, Your Friends & Neighbors. The film opened September 4 at Canal Place Cinema.

The cast [Amy Brenneman, Aaron Eckhart, Catherine Keener, Nastassja Kinski, Jason Patric & Ben Stiller] was well selected as a group of '90s chic city dwellers with lots of neuroses and precious few morals. If the subject matter hadn't been so pathetic, I would have found it a delightful comedic vehicle.

This is a well done movie as it makes the nature of the characters very real and moving. The story is of intimacy between couples and friends told with a twist of ironic insecurity. The scenes with sexual activity are tastefully done so as not to offend. It isn't the explicit sex that offends; it is the anguish of every sexual encounter culminating in a dismal failure.

The only reference to "love making" was mentioned in one Lesbian scene. All other encounters, whether with a married couple, a live-in couple or a grab at your best friend's wife, were referred to as "f**king." If the word offends, this movie will drive you over the edge.

I don't know a social worker or psychologist who wouldn't like to have all six characters in private session. A group session would probably turn out as an orgy. The truth or dare style guy talks are not to be believed as what straight man would admit to his straight male friends that his best lay was with another man. These scenes were some of the funniest sick humor since Natural Born Killers without exaggerated gore.

The information sheet that arrived with the admission said, " intimacy...explored...and exploded." Explored and explored in almost tiring detail but exploded? No. I kept waiting for the explosion to bring some additional life but it was not there. The movie ends as abruptly as it begins--and as ironically. This is a twisted plot with twisted characters. If your sense of humor is a bit twisted like mine, you'll enjoy it.

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