(UNTITLED)
Directed by Jonathan Parker
Produced by Catherine di Napoli & Andreas Olavarria
Written by Parker & di Napoli
Released by Samuel Goldwyn Films
USA. 96 min. Not rated
With Adam Goldberg, Marley Shelton, Eion Bailey, Lucy Punch, Vinnie Jones, Ptolemy Slocum & Zak Orth
 

A barely accessible story and a likeable main character keep this would-be comedy moving forward, but don’t expect a whole lot more. Adam Goldberg plays Adrian, an experimental Manhattan musician whose work features misused instruments, ambient noises, and the jarring clank of an aluminum pail. His brother, Josh (Eion Bailey), on the other hand, is a fabulously successful painter of dull, nearly identical compositions that, without fail, find prominent homes on the walls of high-end banks and corporate offices. The third side in the film’s standard love triangle is Marley Shelton as Madeleine, the owner of a Chelsea art gallery.

In order to keep her gallery in business, Madeleine deals in such benignity as Josh’s work but maintains popularity by showcasing edgier, less commercial art. Her stifling role as a mere love interest may just be more interesting than the half-researched complexities of her profession. The film’s title is appropriate. One endures either a clichéd relationship story or a one-note topic—the vote is still out. The love story is a watchable, familiar one, but on the other hand, the art-world subject is a mildly stimulating conversation piece.

I admired writer/director Jonathan Parker’s first feature, Bartleby, based on the Herman Melville novel of the same name, for its gritty and subversive commitment to an antiestablishment mentality. Crispin Glover played a kind of itinerant temp worker who eventually dropped completely off the grid, with a sterile and lifeless management team witnessing the final decay. It wasn’t exactly a riveting story, but it was clear that Parker, at the time, had a serious interest in investigating what it might mean to avoid fitting into mainstream society.

With this, his third feature, the director clearly makes no identification with any of the alternative artists he depicts. One eccentric sculptor (Vinnie Jones) is nothing short of a buffoon, “reinventing” himself every five minutes, while Madeleine’s pivotal showcase features an artist who trivially pastes everyday objects to the gallery walls. Even Parker’s hero acts as if he’s making his compositions up on the spot, performing with a band that appears never to have played any music before.

(Untitled) offers nothing in the way of examining the process of making art. It’s about bad artists being represented by bad dealers and admired by bad collectors. If it wasn’t a lighthearted boy-meets-girl story, I suppose it could be a satire. Unfortunately, like all of the work depicted in the film, nothing really hits the mark. Michael Lee
October 23, 2009