Ten Tiny Love Stories

I gave this 5 stars for the five monologues that I did enjoy the most. There are two or three really good performances in this, particularly Lisa Gay Hamilton, Kathy Baker, and Rhada Mitchell in a too-short piece that leads off. The rest are either adequate (Kimberley Williams, Alicia Witt and Rebecca Tilney), or less-than-adequate, and a few just plain bad like Deborah Unger (tremulous and melodramatic). A real clunker for me was the morbid, over-the-top, deadly dull story from Elizabeth Pena's monologue which is also way too long, on top of which she doesn't do it well at all.

Hamilton's monologue is probably the best-written of the ten, the finest balanced including deep humiliation with a willingness to confide this without resorting to bathos. Most I found merely self-conscious and stagy with a tinny theatricality that made the person speaking sound so forced and unconnected to reality that I lost contact. This happened especially in Pena's long, drab monologue about a distinctly unhappy marriage. Why Garcia felt the need to stretch this one out like he did I have no idea, but I finally fast-forwarded (turns out I was two seconds from the end of it anyway) and got to Baker's which restored some freshness and balance and gave a better ending to the proceedings (it's wonderful to see an actor with the skill and confidence of Baker simply step into the role and wear it instantly with a minimum of fuss and affectation (certainly one of Ms. Unger's problems)). I don't know if Garcia has a problem with marriage, relationships, or women, but he has an axe to grind somewhere. He has done other ensemble pieces with some of the same women. It seems to be his specialty. While I am a man, I am one who enjoys a good chick flick (Muriel's Wedding, for instance), and I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy Ten Tiny Love Stories. I did, but it was definitely uneven and weighted to the negative side in overall quality.

I think the women were given a bit too much freedom in their interpretations so that some of the less-skilled among them, like Unger, struggled to find the pitch. She just keeps coming apart at the seams during hers leaving herself nowhere to go to modulate her performance. Depending upon the length of the piece, Unger seemed to run out of space and yet sounded so constantly on the brink of disaster emotionally, that it began to sound like a pitiful whine long before it was over. And finally, I felt that some of these monologues were not true in the sense that they had a phony feel to them. They sounded like they were supposed to be candid but they came off stilted. For the three of four good pieces, it's certainly worth the effort.

The idea of watching ten different monologues of women reminiscing about men may seem like a slow death to some viewers, but I found it intriguing to watch these actresses mine the most out of their characters with no safety net provided. As a heterosexual guy, I would recommend this film to other men as learning aid on how to listen to women in the very least, even if some scenes stretch credibility. I was particularly impressed with Kimberly Williams who I had not given much credit to as an actress before seeing this. She paints a vivid picture of the story she tells not only with her voice but with entire body language. I also continue to be impressed with Alicia Witt who continues to show more daring in her craft than most young actors.

I'll tell you. The thought of watching 10 woman talk about personal moments in their lives didn't sound too enticing. Especially when it was going to be recorded as a dead-on monologue with static camera, etc. Nonetheless, Rodgrio Garcia (THINGS YOU CAN TELL JUST BY LOOKING AT HER, NINE LIVES) exceeded my expectations with his vignette film TEN TINY LOVE STORIES. Although some of the monologues are better than others, it is truly a showcase of great writing/acting. My favorite was Kimberly Anne Williams recalling a trip to Greece and her interesting encounters. However, it is also hard to forget Garcia stand-by Kathy Baker discussing lost love and life moving on. Check this one when you're feeling contemplative.

This is a movie about how men think women think about love. No woman describes a one-night sexual encounter and declares it a love story.

Of the ten monologues I felt only three really had any kind of truth ring through them. I kept waiting for the film to get better, and it did a bit, but never better enough.

This is an interesting concept, and I kept wanting it to be good, but it never succeeded. Maybe if they actually WERE love stories it would have worked.

There are some good actresses in the picture, but every now and then they bump up against a word or a sentence that they simply can't put across as if it were spontaneous. Good try, but bad writing.