| | Todd Solondz, director of WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE and the HAPPINESS, ups the ante on his already controversial career with this ruthless satire. Broken into two unrelated chapters, "Fiction" follows college girl Selma Blair (CRUEL INTENTIONS) through a degrading sexual encounter with her writing teacher (Robert Wisdom), while the less concise "Non-Fiction" chronicles the mutual exploitation of a shallow documentary filmmaker (Paul Giamatti doing a near-parody of director Solondz) and his clueless subject, a suburban high school slacker named Scooby (Mark Webber). Solondz calls 'em like he sees 'em, and it is not pretty… but it's frequently hilarious. He's bracingly, ruthlessly unsentimental, and has a unique loathing for white lies and political correctness. His distaste for the comforting falsehood isn't a winner's contempt for the crutches of the weak. Quite the opposite! He's an ugly, alarmingly frail guy who was doubtless the subject of a lot of polite pity growing up. He's also a genius, who was aware of it and resented it. Both films that make up STORYTELLING are marvelous, but the Selma Blair story is the stand-out, and it thankfully presented here uncut in unrated form. (It's a two-sided disc with the R-rated version on one side, unrated version on the other.) Without giving away any details, I promise you it's the most politically-incorrect film you'll see any time soon, and contains a blunt and alarming Selma Blair sex scene that reminds us we still have some taboos left—not taboos about anything as trivial as sex acts, but about attitudes and words. |
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