The
communications explosion that is the Internet
has brought the wide world into our homes.
It has also provided an outlet for merry
pranksters, such as those who promulgate
urban legends. Who hasn’t heard these—the
guy who wakes up in an icy tub with a
kidney missing and a lipstick message
on the mirror to dial 911; the gangbangers
who drive without lights after dark, and
choose the unlucky soul who flashes his
or her lights to remind them as their
next victim; that wackos are putting HIV-infected
needles in the return change slots of
pay phones.
Charlie
(Futterman) has heard them all, and now
he asks us, "Heard any good stories
lately?" One night, when leaving
a party at Brett’s (Cumming), he and his
lover, Chris (Keeslar) are brutally attacked,
an episode that shatters their relationship
and their lives.
As
Charlie moves through one long, tormented
night, reliving the assault, reliving
moments from when he and Chris were falling
in love, and roaming the streets of NYC,
searching for a man named Dean (Ball),
it becomes increasingly difficult to tell
what’s happening here and now, what happened
in the past, and what happened only inside
Charlie’s head.
Charlie’s
story seems to be the focus, but as I
watched the side stories (including a
woman who has a sudden brainwave about
how to dry off her poodle), I had to ask
myself, "Is any of this happening?"
Is Charlie’s story in fact just another
urban legend, with its teller to be revealed
later?
As
to what Charlie’s story is, well, you
can see it coming almost from the very
beginning, and then it’s here, and it’s
not quite what you thought.
URBANIA
really pulled me in and made me anxious
for Charlie, partly due to the exceptional
performance of Dan Futterman, who made
pain, grief, and nervous daring palpable.
Josh Hamilton, as Matt the bartender with
a tale of his own, was also a stand-out.
Jon
Shear and Co. had a fine idea here, and
while URBANIA worked on me quite effectively,
I just can’t commit. Maybe I see too many
movies. So many filmmakers tell their
tales out of sequence that it’s robbed
the device of its power, even for films
with a really good reason to be told this
way, such as URBANIA.
Let’s
just say, recommended for those who crave
non-mainstream fare and for big-time moviegoers.
Others—you pays your money, you takes
your chances.
—Roxanne
Bogucka, an Action Grrl!
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While we would never encourage anyone
to destroy a video...
