Review by stills-6

Great performances highlight this small story, which has a great hook and some forgivable flaws. The main themes of communication and isolation are given time to flesh themselves out in three separate stories that center around a shared apartment. I like the pacing in this film, it's slow enough to wrap itself around the story, but not so slow as to drag.

The three main female characters are all good, especially Tripplehorn as Pastel, the avant-garde artist and pseudo girlfriend of Broderick. I've never seen her do any better with a character. Broderick has a curious role to play as a man who is tolerant of others up to a point (like his view of Sciorra's illogical behavior), but still has the serenity to offer marital advice to a woman who has just put him through a frustrating case of coitus interruptus. Sciorra's character is more problematic - she has a definite fear-aggression streak that gets tempered somewhat by the end, but there's also a good deal of "tough chick" bravado in her performance that makes it interesting.

I wasn't completely convinced by all of the transformations in the final ten minutes of the movie, but it ties things up neatly enough so you don't feel cheated and leaves enough room for the characters to grow further after the final shot.