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GRAY MATTERS
Written & Directed by: Sue Kramer.
Produced by: Bob Yari, John Hermansen, Jill Footlick & Kramer.
Director of Photography: John S. Bartley.
Edited by: Wendey Stanzler.
Music: Andrew Hollender.
Released by: Yari Film Group.
Country of Origin: USA. 92 min. PG-13.
With: Heather Graham, Tom Cavanagh, Bridget Moynahan, Rachel Shelley, Molly Shannon, Alan Cumming & Sissy Spacek.

Gray Matters opens with the usual tour of iconic New York City images – the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Chrysler Building, and so on, all to the tune of Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek.” But it might as well be the 1935 of Top Hat when the camera turns to Gray (Heather Graham) and Sam (Tom Cavanagh) dancing together – these naifs don’t seem to live in the contemporary city of Will & Grace.

The film’s trailer gives away the best of the few jokes and the central gimmick, so it is hardly a spoiler to reveal what Sam means when he explains at a dinner party that he and Gray have been together 30 years – they’re siblings. He came to New York for a surgical residency and she to be a successful advertising executive. Gray has adapted to New York enough to be in therapy, with the eccentric and not very perceptive Dr. Sydney (Sissy Spacek), who colorfully holds her sessions in such locations as a bowling alley. Gray agrees to the therapist’s maternal advice to stop being “closed for repairs” in dating and seek out likely singles spots. She drags her brother along, and they borrow a dog so they can socialize at a dog run, where both are immediately captivated by the lovely Charlie (Bridget Moynahan), also new to New York. The three quickly bond, and Gray, on the night before her brother’s hasty Vegas wedding, realizes, to her surprise and confusion, that her feelings for Charlie are more than for a future sister-in-law.

Debut writer/director Sue Kramer, inspired by the experiences of her own sister, avoids tensions of homophobia and keeps the focus more on Gray’s very late blooming. Gray gradually loses her klutziness, but her extended trepidation about her self-realization seems trite and virtually mimics an arc from the first season of TV’s Dawson’s Creek back in 1998, and that was set amongst teens in a small town. Equally dated, Alan Cumming, as a ubiquitous aphorism-spouting cab driver/unemployed actor with a crush on Gray, recommends Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” for guidance, and that’s before the silly scene where he dresses in drag to pass at a lesbian bar. Molly Shannon as Gray’s friend at work goes through a parallel issue of self-realization, here centered on body image, but she is so spindly thin that her obsession with Weight Watchers meetings seems more dangerous than amusing. Nora Lee Mandel
February 23, 2007