Review: Little City

Set in San Francisco, where it’s meant to be like a small-town thing where everybody has dated everybody, and you can’t escape them. It centres around several characters who go in and out of various romantic couplings as they journey towards finding whatever and whoever it is they want in life. Womanising bartender Jon Bon Jovi and painter/cabbie (!) Josh Charles are best buds, but the former’s affair with the latter’s girlfriend (Annabella Sciorra) blows that out of the water. Charles, meanwhile, still hasn’t gotten over his ex, Joanna Going. Going decided that she preferred the company of women, and has become involved with her older art teacher (JoBeth Williams). Williams, a bit of a temptress, has a wandering eye and moves in on insecure Penelope Ann Miller (who was just hired as a bartender alongside Mr. Jovi. Or is it Mr. Bon Jovi?), giving the latter her first lesbian experience (Something Ms. Williams’ character has apparently done for plenty of other straight girls). Get ready for a relationship merry-go-round, folks.

 

More like “Small Movie”, this 1997 indie relationships movie from first-time writer-director Roberto Benabib wastes a pretty decent cast in one of the most contrived screenplays you’ll ever encounter. Certainly not one of the more interesting or accomplished Miramax indie flicks, that’s for sure. Although Annabella Sciorra is a tad shouty at times, and Jon Bon Jovi isn’t asked to do all that much, there isn’t a bad performance to be found here. It’s the script that’s entirely to blame here. This is best exemplified by a scene where Penelope Ann Miller and JoBeth Williams (in quite possibly the strangest sexual coupling since “Harold and Maude”, possibly since Ronald Reagan and Bonzo- what?) have just had sex. They have an inorganic post-coital discussion about the difference between having sex with a man and having sex with a woman. It’s not remotely convincing, sexy, funny, or interesting. Miller and the supremely underrated Williams (despite a heavy-handed ‘butch’ haircut) are both really good here, but they can’t do much with this shit that is too clever by half...but not as clever as it thinks it is. Miller’s character alternates between really appealing and for the love of God woman, would you please shut the fuck up. You’ve just had sex, there’s no need to psychoanalyse it.

 

It’s also annoying how all of these characters’ lives are interconnected, which is where the title comes in. That doesn’t make it clever, just annoying, contrived, and clichéd. When it comes time for all of these relationships to change and swap all at about the same convenient time, things have truly been overworked up to buggery. Even less clever is that the person that these characters want to be with only wants to be with them at the exact same time that first person has entered a relationship with someone new. It’s contrived, but also extremely repetitive. Mr. Benabib obviously thinks it’s clever that two of the three girls Josh Charles’ character has been involved with have slept with JoBeth Williams. It’s ironic, sure, but not clever. It just makes him look like the biggest loser on the planet.

 

The worst part of the film for me, though, was when one character got pregnant and it could be one of the two leading men as the father. ***** IF YOU THINK THAT WAS A SPOILER, BEST NOT READ THIS THEN ***** That’s contrived, but what really shat me was that this situation was resolved in the worst way possible unless you’re a pro-lifer: So you’re getting married to Mr. Jovi, and that means you don’t need to find out who the father is? Fuck you, lady. It’s not all about YOU. It’s about the kid, should you choose to have it, and you need to know which of these two perfectly OK guys is its father. What an awful, selfish woman, and seemingly the filmmaker approves of her actions, too. ***** END SPOILER *****

 

The best performances here come from Miller, Williams, and a surprisingly solid Joanna Going. I assumed she had spending her time since “Inventing the Abbotts” hanging out with Shannyn Sossamon, Gretchen Mol, Natasha Gregson-Wagner, and all the other 90s it-girls who never quite made it, but apparently she’s doing quite well on TV’s “House of Cards” these days. I’ve always thought JoBeth Williams should’ve been a bigger deal than she has been (much like Christine Lahti, Annabeth Gish, and Amber Heard), so it’s always good to see her, even in something like this. She’s the best thing in the film. However, Benabib doesn’t seem to like her character, she’s presented as kind of a ‘player’, and unlike the similar character played by Mr. Bon Bon, she doesn’t get any added complexity. It’s almost as if he approves of Bon Jovi’s character and disapproves of Williams’. I also have to say that Annabella Sciorra and even Penelope Ann Miller both seem too old for Josh Charles. And indeed Sciorra is almost 10 years older, with Miller about 7 years older. Sometimes you can get away with that, especially if something is actually made of the age difference, but here the age difference is noticeable yet never referred to.

 

It’s an extremely contrived and quite pretentious film, and not insightful or fresh enough to get away with it. Small movie. Really, really small.

 

Rating: D+