Independent filmmaker Jon Jost -- a one-man team of director, writer, photographer, editor, and pseudonymous musical scorer -- here enters, or approaches, the commercial mainstream (an American Playhouse production) without abandoning his art-movie gimmicks, devices, "strategies": a flat, frontal composition of the back of a spectator's head eclipsing a painting at the Metropolitan; a profile shot of one, and only one, participant in a two-party conversation. The visual quality (high-speed 35mm) is a bit uneven and just barely passable. The verbal part has a surer grip ("I'm getting hammered, baby. Nails are going into each hand" -- that's a financial wizard responding to the bad news on his computer screen). And though the apposition of New York art world and New York financial world never produces a coherent statement, the little details of life (e.g., the awkwardness of asking an opera-singing roommate to rehearse elsewhere) feel right, feel comfortable. With Stephen Lack, Emmanuelle Chaulet, Grace Phillips. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
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