Fast Food, Fast Women

This is the third film I've seen pairing director Amos Kollek and actor Anna Thomson. The other two, "Sue" and "Fiona", were both great and about the most depressing things you could watch ("Sue", in fact, is a masterpiece). So I was curious to see where Kollek was going to go with this, a more light-hearted, and even comic romance. Of course, we aren't talking "Sleepless in Seattle" here, thank goodness. I have to say that while I was watching the movie, there were times whenI shook my head and said to myself, "this is bad" or "that's ridiculous". In fact, this film had many more flaws and awkward scenes than Kollek's earlier work. But at the same time, after it was all over and I was walking home, I really felt like I had seen something special.

I can't explain why exactly, but one thing that was surprising is that Anna Thomson's character, while the driving force in the previous films, was comparatively dull and uninspiring and underdeveloped here. Her love interest, even moreso. But this film was buoyed by a secondary romance plot involving two 60-somethings fumbling their ways into some sort of relationship. Louise Lasser Louise Lasser, hehe, making a comeback of sorts in recent years ("Happiness"), was just wonderful. Her partner (was it Robert Modicka?) was also off-the-map charming. If I have one complaint, there wasn't enough time in the film devoted to this burgeoning romance. There is one scene involving the two that is about as tender as anything i've ever seen on the big screen. It's nice to see good love stories about middle-aged people and above and they show that often the actors, perhaps due to more experience acting, pull it off much better than most of the young and the beautiful.

In sum, another winner for Kollek and Thomson, and I just wonder when, if ever, Thomson will become a star in the states (she is quite popular in France). I kind of hope she doesn't, but that's out of my own selfishness to see her in more of these kinds of films as opposed to the inevitable lure to make the big money in the bad movies. I also hope Louise Lasser continues to get more parts because she rocks. (8 out of 10)

At first, Anna Thomson's bot-ox lips, nose job, and silicone distracted me. I notice that this look is big in Hollywood, the bee stung lips of so many movie stars, their big boobs on a starved stick of a body makes the young guys pant, but the girls can't possibly match the impossible can they? Anna is an educated woman that has rejected Wall Street to work as a waitress in a diner. She's 35 and her mom's applying the pressure. Her Broadway paramour, a married man has strung her along since she was 23. Enter Jamie Harris, starving taxicab driving, failed novelist. Suddenly ex-wife dumps Jamie's kid plus one on him. Naturally through a series of unlikely big city moments, Anna and Jamie hook up, lose each other, and love.

Then there's the autumn autumn match of still spry, 70 year old Robert Modica and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, ex-Woodie Allen wife Louise Lasser. This relationship of seasoned citizens so rare in film took the show away from the yougen's. We cared whether or not sweet, only had sex with someone he loved, Modica can get it up for willing Lasser. We hoped the drugstore was stocked with Viagara.

The screenplay offered some silly city shtick, New York City hip, but these scenes fall flat; nevertheless, this one, the babe and I enjoyed.

I saw this movie last night on TV, and found it refreshing, personally inspiring, despite the negative comments others have written about it.

The characters redeemed themselves by sticking with what they thought they believed in, and/or went after what they thought was important to them, despite how impossible those goals seemed.

Much as Bella has chosen her waitress job, various characters meet impediments which cause them to choose one way or the other. At the end, you realize how true to themselves they really were.

The quirky personalities made the characters more real to me. I was able to envelop myself totally in this movie, forget all about myself, my troubles, my own world, despite some loose ends and unnatural jumps in the stories. Life's like that. These people seemed real to me, even when I knew they weren't.

The movie made me happy in general, happy for the characters' successes, and aware that it was a fairy tale colored a bit by some of life's inevitable disappointments. The characters were not foolish, just human. Because most of their lives were not in the movie, it seemed somewhat like a loosely structured play.

Rough, unpolished, quirky, non-Hollywood romances, people getting by, people looking for the "right" person to love them.....7.5 points from me

Today I'm happy that I'm from Israel. This is directly connected to the fact that the director of this film is from Israel either.It really makes me proud to know that the brain who create this wonderful film,grew up here. It is a comedy about life, and all the regular components of our routine: love, sex, work, children, money, getting older... All characters are looking for love and warmness, in their boring life, and they all get connected in some way... We can find ourself in each characters, even thought it present strangeness, and something bizar.This is why I enjoyed watching the film- you can't tell what happened with the character a minute after you've seen her\him on the screen. You won't get any big ideas from the film, and you won't find a message that will make you think allot after the film ends, but- it has a positive atmosphere, and you'll get out from the cinema with a big smile, and with an optimist opinion about life.

As Robert Altman's Shortcuts this film is about different people with different linked stories. This film from Amos Kollek belongs to the new independent American cinema wave: fresh, clear and very direct.

Bella is an insecure girl that works in a fast food restaurant with a tremendous need of love. Bella is very fragile so fragile that walks with the stiletto heels in order to see things with a panoramic and upper position view but with the fragility, detachment and embarrassment of a teenager. She has a periodical love-making relationship with a married man.

Three elder men, one looking for a female friend through a lonely heart advertisement, getting disappointed when the lady realizes that he has never made love in his life. The other two, very pathetic, talking and chatting about unlikely sex all the time. The mature woman stresses the fact that "merchandise is no longer valid" (at that age). The love happiness and kindness of elder people has reminded to me the Marco Ferreri's film: "La Casa del Sorriso".

All these stories that are linked by two common factors: loneliness and lack of love. The film has also to be seen not only for its cleverness but also to understand that in America not only commercial films are being produced.

Rating: 6/10