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My last film in the Seattle festival was Leaving Metropolis (IMDB, Monday 9:30pm). Usually you say "last, but not least", but in this case, it was. That's not saying it's bad, it's just that the three movies yesterday were so good, this one simply had too much competition.
David is a painter who's running dry of inspiration. Some of his best work was done before when he was a waiter, getting inspiration from the constantly changing flow of people he met. He decides to get a job as a waiter at a small out of the way cafe run by Matt and Violet. It turns out that Matt has a suppressed dream of being a comic book artist, and bonds quickly with David. The problem is he's straight. Or thinks he is. The expected complications ensue. As if that wasn't enough, there's a parallel thread with David's pre-op transexual roommate with AIDS.
This movie reminded me a lot of Making Love, in that a married "straight" guy essentially comes out. It was pretty well done, though I didn't really go for some of the surrealness near the end. One part I particularly liked was one sex scene, which was fairly typical in cutting from one partner to the other, but in this case it was Matt, David, Matt, Violet, etc. back and forth. It worked extremely well.
The first half of the movie was definitely the best part, with some great lines (which I've unfortunately forgotten now --- I'm going to have to see it again!). In addition, Vince Corazza, who plays Matt, does an outstanding job and really makes you care about him.
The rest of the details are spoilers, so they're in the extended entry below, but I give this a 7.
****************************SPOILER****************************
A movie like this can either be a fantasy with a happy ending, or it can be realistic. Making Love was the latter, but tried to mollify the downer ending by showing everyone years later after they've recovered. Leaving Metropolis doesn't, although it does show them starting to move on. This is especially a downer because Matt and David had great chemistry and David could really have helped Matt become the artist he really wants to be. And following up on the comments in the main part, because I cared so much about Matt, I thought he got short shrift at the end, where we just see him going to the train station, but we have no clue where he's going. Actually, that's sort of how most everyone gets left, but I cared more about Matt.
I'm afraid I'm one of those people who like happy endings. I don't go to movies to find out how bad the world can be --- I already know it's rarely a happy place. It would have been hard to have things work out realistically and still be happy, but I would have enjoyed it a lot more if that work had been done. I also could have done without the AIDS thread. I know AIDS is still here, and even though the "cocktails" work for a lot of people, they don't for some. But. "Been there, done that" in the movies. It would have been ok if it had had more relevance to the main thread, but it had the feel of being filler because the main thread didn't make a whole movie. I give it a 7 because overall it was a good movie, but just...
Posted by abatie at October 21, 2003 01:39 AM