"Flannel Pajamas"
by Andrew O'Hehir
I've been trying not to irritate myself by reading other people's reviews of Jeff Lipsky's film "Flannel Pajamas," mostly because I think it's a film that goes so directly to my own predilections and prejudices that I almost don't want to share it. I also think it is so truly and exceptionally fine, a spiny and dispassionate little masterpiece of a marriage movie, that I don't want to expend energy groaning over the fact that it's doomed to reach (I suspect) a very small audience.
Lipsky is a big-time macher in the New York independent-film world -- and I think this is one of those rare occasions when an Irish kid from California can use a Yiddish word correctly. Over his 30-year career, he's helped distribute such culture-shifting movies as John Cassavetes' "A Woman Under the Influence," Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise," R.W. Fassbinder's "The Marriage of Maria Braun," Mike Leigh's "Life Is Sweet" and many, many more. I'd have a hard time trashing his movie even if it sucked. But it doesn't.
Not only does "Flannel Pajamas" not suck, its story of the love and marriage of a pair of attractive, professional-grade Manhattanites, Stuart (Justin Kirk) and Nicole (Julianne Nicholson), might be the best relationship movie of the year. People are inescapably going to compare it to Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage" and Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," and if those make you groan, then for Christ's sake go see something else. But "Flannel Pajamas" has wonderful acting, meticulous and even thrilling camerawork. Its dialogue is terrific, cutting close to the bone without sacrificing realism for theatricality. And the story is packed with poisonous little surprises, spring-loaded with booby traps.
This isn't a cuddly picture, or even an especially friendly one. It isn't a romantic comedy where wedding bells are heard and the future dissolves into a gauzy haze. Stuart is a handsome, commanding guy with marvelous hair who spins a brilliant line of bullshit he mostly believes. After his first diner date with Nicole, he spreads his suit jacket over a puddle for her. A few days later, he offers to pay off her student loans, and tells her to move out of her bathroom-less apartment and into his (which actually has a toilet). Kirk was terrific as the flamboyant Prior Walter in HBO's "Angels in America," and it's a treat to see him expend the same physical energy on a seductive ladies' man.
I haven't noticed Nicholson before (she's in the cast of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"), but she's an intriguing blend of mousiness and sex appeal, radiating a sort of aggressive need. As the viewer, you walk a delicate line all the way through "Flannel Pajamas": You root for this couple but you don't; they're vulnerable, appealing and (like the real people we know) also a little repulsive because of that; their sexual and emotional passion is real, but the writing's still on the wall the whole time.
Lipsky's whole cast is great, from Jamie Harrold as Stuart's loving but borderline-psycho brother, who sucks up the oxygen in any room he enters, to Chelsea Altman as Nicole's domineering and "evil" (Stuart's word) best friend and Rebecca Schull as Nicole's mom back home in Montana, who seems, at first, a completely inoffensive and gentle person. Each of these characters has a way of exploding out of the film at completely unexpected moments (again, like the real people we know).
There's a scene between Stuart and Nicole's mother in a hospital cafeteria, when they're waiting for good or bad news about Nicole, and the mother launches, quietly and politely, into a stream of anti-Semitic invective. (Stuart is Jewish and Nicole is Catholic.) The camera pivots slowly around them in a semicircle. It's one of the most powerful sequences I've seen in a movie all year. And the thing is, Stuart is grateful to her: At last their relationship is getting somewhere. It's one of the only moments in the film where I really liked him.
I'll shut up about "Flannel Pajamas" now. It's your thing or it's not, and I don't have the right to harangue anybody who's not interested in sitting through an intimate, sometimes painful exploration of a relationship between two fictional strangers. Let's leave it at this: Jeff Lipsky was paying attention, all those years. I've never seen his first film, "Childhood's End," but I'm going to find it. And he'd damn well better not stop now.
"Flannel Pajamas" is now playing at the Angelika Film Center in New York, and opens Nov. 24 in Los Angeles, Dec. 1 in Chicago, Jan. 19 in Dallas and Portland, Ore., Feb. 2 in San Francisco and Syracuse, N.Y., and Feb. 16 in Denver, with more cities to follow.
I've been trying not to irritate myself by reading other people's reviews of Jeff Lipsky's film "Flannel Pajamas," mostly because I think it's a film that goes so directly to my own predilections and prejudices that I almost don't want to share it. I also think it is so truly and exceptionally fine, a spiny and dispassionate little masterpiece of a marriage movie, that I don't want to expend energy groaning over the fact that it's doomed to reach (I suspect) a very small audience.
Lipsky is a big-time macher in the New York independent-film world -- and I think this is one of those rare occasions when an Irish kid from California can use a Yiddish word correctly. Over his 30-year career, he's helped distribute such culture-shifting movies as John Cassavetes' "A Woman Under the Influence," Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise," R.W. Fassbinder's "The Marriage of Maria Braun," Mike Leigh's "Life Is Sweet" and many, many more. I'd have a hard time trashing his movie even if it sucked. But it doesn't.
Not only does "Flannel Pajamas" not suck, its story of the love and marriage of a pair of attractive, professional-grade Manhattanites, Stuart (Justin Kirk) and Nicole (Julianne Nicholson), might be the best relationship movie of the year. People are inescapably going to compare it to Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage" and Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," and if those make you groan, then for Christ's sake go see something else. But "Flannel Pajamas" has wonderful acting, meticulous and even thrilling camerawork. Its dialogue is terrific, cutting close to the bone without sacrificing realism for theatricality. And the story is packed with poisonous little surprises, spring-loaded with booby traps.
This isn't a cuddly picture, or even an especially friendly one. It isn't a romantic comedy where wedding bells are heard and the future dissolves into a gauzy haze. Stuart is a handsome, commanding guy with marvelous hair who spins a brilliant line of bullshit he mostly believes. After his first diner date with Nicole, he spreads his suit jacket over a puddle for her. A few days later, he offers to pay off her student loans, and tells her to move out of her bathroom-less apartment and into his (which actually has a toilet). Kirk was terrific as the flamboyant Prior Walter in HBO's "Angels in America," and it's a treat to see him expend the same physical energy on a seductive ladies' man.
I haven't noticed Nicholson before (she's in the cast of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"), but she's an intriguing blend of mousiness and sex appeal, radiating a sort of aggressive need. As the viewer, you walk a delicate line all the way through "Flannel Pajamas": You root for this couple but you don't; they're vulnerable, appealing and (like the real people we know) also a little repulsive because of that; their sexual and emotional passion is real, but the writing's still on the wall the whole time.
Lipsky's whole cast is great, from Jamie Harrold as Stuart's loving but borderline-psycho brother, who sucks up the oxygen in any room he enters, to Chelsea Altman as Nicole's domineering and "evil" (Stuart's word) best friend and Rebecca Schull as Nicole's mom back home in Montana, who seems, at first, a completely inoffensive and gentle person. Each of these characters has a way of exploding out of the film at completely unexpected moments (again, like the real people we know).
There's a scene between Stuart and Nicole's mother in a hospital cafeteria, when they're waiting for good or bad news about Nicole, and the mother launches, quietly and politely, into a stream of anti-Semitic invective. (Stuart is Jewish and Nicole is Catholic.) The camera pivots slowly around them in a semicircle. It's one of the most powerful sequences I've seen in a movie all year. And the thing is, Stuart is grateful to her: At last their relationship is getting somewhere. It's one of the only moments in the film where I really liked him.
I'll shut up about "Flannel Pajamas" now. It's your thing or it's not, and I don't have the right to harangue anybody who's not interested in sitting through an intimate, sometimes painful exploration of a relationship between two fictional strangers. Let's leave it at this: Jeff Lipsky was paying attention, all those years. I've never seen his first film, "Childhood's End," but I'm going to find it. And he'd damn well better not stop now.
"Flannel Pajamas" is now playing at the Angelika Film Center in New York, and opens Nov. 24 in Los Angeles, Dec. 1 in Chicago, Jan. 19 in Dallas and Portland, Ore., Feb. 2 in San Francisco and Syracuse, N.Y., and Feb. 16 in Denver, with more cities to follow.
posted by Basil Epicurus at 1:49 PM
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