Expired

This was the first movie we attended at Sundance 2007. There was quite a bit of food for thought in this movie. The main character, Claire, is a very likable person who is quite lonely. Because of her desperation, she finds herself dating a totally reprehensible person "Jay" (Jason Patric). He was such a horrible person that I had a hard time seeing just why Claire continued to let him into her life. At one point in the movie, Claire's character implored Jay to "be nice to me." That was a very poignant moment in the film. As I said earlier, this movie had lots of food for thought, most of it about why women are attracted to men who seem like jerks to the rest of the world. The movie truly didn't answer these questions, and it was a depressing film to watch. Teri Garr was very good in a dual role as Claire's stroke affected mother and as her perfectly healthy but obnoxious aunt. Samantha Morton was brilliant as Claire, and Jason Patric also did a wonderful job. It was a movie that was quite difficult to watch, however, so I don't know how successful it will be.

The movie Expired is really unlike most of the feature films you'll see these days. It has an intensity, a committed vision that grabs you and holds you in its grips for the entire hour and a half or so. Of films in recent years that share this quality, I can think of Todd Solondz' "Happiness".

Expired is the story of two L.A. parking officers, or "meter maids", one female and one male, who meet on the job and have an increasingly dysfunctional, mercurial relationship. Samantha Morton plays it extremely sweet, wide-eyed and gentle as Claire, a meter maid who lives with her stroke-incapacitated, essentially mute mother and hates having to ruin peoples' days with tickets. Jason Patric is Jay, a taut, seething, bull-shouldered ball of defensive machismo in a blue uniform with a ticket-gun and a hilarious dark mustache. He likes slapping parking tickets on folks the way some LA cops like cracking heads.

The first two thirds or so of the film especially are darkly comedic, and the purposefully stylized elements- lighting, dialogue, supporting actors, visual action, set design, musical score- create a very sharp, bittersweet, somewhat tragic kind of comedy, like the best of the Coen Brothers films. This isn't broad American multiplex comedy, this is comedy that comes from true pathos, sadness and the small calamities of life. While Morton's face shows sensitivity and vulnerability- two of her big strengths- Patric's Jay character is fantastic because he offsets the angry disciplinarian guy with loose moments of real charm and also sarcastic, almost whimsical humor.

The film progresses with a few traditional "plot points" that serve to accelerate the conflicts and create moments of challenge and decision for the characters, but really the film is also greatly a close-up examination of the attempted close relationship of two equally extreme opposites- the "naive, yearning do-gooder" and the "previously injured, prickly, defensive bully." At its core it's just a film about human beings- what they have, what they want and need, and the different places they're coming from emotionally.

Visually, the film was shot in a crisp, almost beautiful way, at once seeming straightforwardly no-nonsense and yet heavily atmospheric. A lot of the production design strongly complements the film- from the richly hued, antique-laden apartment Claire and her Mom live in to the various LA coffee shops and streetscapes. The musical scoring is also highly evocative and appropriate- with the best of it reminding me of great melodic work Michael Penn and Jon Brion did in P.T. Anderson's film 'Hard Eight'.

Ileana Douglas is perfect as Claire's decent-hearted, energetic busybody neighbor and Teri Garr is rock solid as the mute, wheelchair-bound Mom but hilarious and deliciously campy in a second role as the Mom's crazy sister in Pomona! With its strong vision and execution, 'Expired' should certainly put writer/director Cecilia Miniucchi on the Hollywood map.

Expired is one of those films that remind you about simply just being human. I was fortunate enough to watch this at it's Los Angeles screening. I found myself, as the story went along watching the audience just as much as the characters on the screen. The story is exquisitely woven, I felt the writer was a maestro just when I felt like laughing I wanted to cry. There were moments so poignant that even as the film progressed you find yourself thinking back to those scenes. This film is an emotional roller coaster, but worth the ride. Basic human emotion, empathy and relationships, this is the film to watch. No bells and whistles, just magnificent writing and performances. Jason Patric gives the performance of a lifetime and Samantha Morton is the reflection of the human soul.

She starts by telling us she is the most hated in the world. That's because of her profession, but her attitude towards life is really much like the hated one. This woman, Claire, is shy, a loser, and she doesn't expect to be anything else. But there really isn't anything tragic about it.

Then this man turns up. An emotional invalid and an impossible love relation starts. These are people who don't take anything for granted. He's aggressive about it, she isn't.

Samantha Morton is tremendous in this part as a completely non-boring bore. She teaches us that you can live a life without success. And that life is a true one.

The movie describes the life of a meter maid in Los Angeles. She lives with her disabled mother (played by Teri Garr). Beyond her mother, some other aspects of her life are also disabled. She has a positive outlook on life and tries to keep that as the story unfolds. Her relationship with her mother, her aunt, and a potential romantic interest at work weave together to make the story. This was a Sundance film and it was fairly well attended, but I am guessing the tone of the movie will make it hard for a wide release to happen. Cringing is very common throughout the movie as the characters choose paths or actions that most of us would steer clear of. At least a couple of the scenes could do with better editing as there were jumps that should not be in a big studio production.

7/10