Main Cast: Adam Goldberg, Marley Shelton, Eion Bailey, Lucy Punch, Vinnie Jones
Release Year: 2009
Country: US
Run Time: 96 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
The uncomfortable merger of art and commerce leads to an unstable romantic triangle in this satiric comedy from director Jonathan Parker. Madeleine (Marley Shelton) is a beautiful young woman who runs an upscale art gallery in New York City. While Madeleine prides herself on exhibiting the most daring and cutting-edge work on the East Coast, her dirty little secret is that she's able to keep the place open by selling the bland but accessible work of her boyfriend (Eion Bailey), whose paintings are quite popular with corporate clients. However, Madeleine is drawn to moody creative types, and her boyfriend makes the mistake of introducing her to his bother (Adam Goldberg), an avant-garde composer whose music is built around breaking glass and the clatter of metal objects. Before long, Madeleine has fallen for the pretentious composer and has to choose between him and the man who can keep her gallery in the black. Also starring Vinnie Jones and Zak Orth, (Untitled) received its world premiere at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Depending on how much abstract thought the viewer is willing to engage in, (Untitled) is either an astoundingly brilliant meditation on the vacuous essence of popular contemporary art, or a dreadful mess, the cinematic equivalent of "my six-year-old could do this." Perhaps with this in mind, the filmmakers have provided a product so devoid of entertainment that it virtually guarantees 90 minutes of awkward silence in which to nurture the audience's ruminations on the film’s deeper meaning and inherent worth. Given enough time and tedium, the human mind can transform a piece of string into a transcendent statement on the essence of existence, and thus it is possible to conjure an analysis of (Untitled) that invokes the confluence of form and content and congratulates the film for demonstrating the very principles of aesthetic deficiency which it purports to critique. But the simpler, more immediate reaction is that (Untitled) is uninspired, unenlightening, unsurprising, and painfully unfunny. It represents the worst of that embarrassing hybrid, the indie blockbuster, wherein carefully composed aphorisms and feigned irreverence replace car chases and explosions as the punctuation to each scene. The film stridently tries and consistently (often spectacularly) fails to milk tired laughs from sitcom-level antics. The attempts at hilarity include an avant-garde musician who repeatedly practices kicking a steel bucket, a pretentious art collector who (get this!) can’t quite figure out how to use his high-tech cell phone, an artist who is crushed to death by a stuffed cow, and a woman who sings -- in German! The best that can be said of the cast is that they are acting as hard as they can, which is not a compliment. The exception is Adam Goldberg, who acts as little as possible. Goldberg refuses to alter his misanthropic scowl throughout the film, making it impossible to accept the already incredulous idea that a gorgeous woman would throw herself into bed with him. The most disturbing aspect of the cast is their color, or lack thereof. Every person with a speaking role is white -- all of them. The dearth of diversity is such that, when a black or Asian extra strolls through a gallery scene, they stand out like the human host of The Muppet Show. An optimist might posit that the minority actors simply had better taste in scripts. One character declares, "If the critics hate it, it means that something interesting is going on." In that case, (Untitled) is absolutely rapturous. ~ All Movie Guide
Zak Orth - Porter Canby; Ptolemy Slocum - Monroe; Michael Panes - Grant; Svetlana Efremova - Russian Singer; Marceline Hugot - Corporate Art Buyer; Janet Carroll - Helen Finkelstein; Ben Hammer - Morton Cabot; David Beach - Critic at Morton Cabot's Concert; David Cale - Critic at Adrian's Concert; Dean Wareham - Critic at Adrian's Concert; Kelly Deadmon - Socialite at Art Dinner; Marla Sucharetza - Socialite at Art Dinner; Carol Schweid - Mother; Stan Carp - Father; Ray Demattis - Restaurant Manager; Michael Hauschild - Adrian's Fan; Frank Holliday - Security Guard; Lawson White - Seth
Credit
Len X. Clayton - Art Director, Tom Monahan - Associate Producer, Susan Monahan - Associate Producer, Lorna Nowve - Associate Producer, Shahrzad "Sheri" Davani - First Assistant Director, Jonathan Parker - Director, Keiko Deguchi - Editor, Adam Goldberg - Executive Producer, Matt Luber - Executive Producer, Paul Jarrett - Line Producer, David Lang - Composer (Music Score), David Snyder - Production Designer, Svetlana Cvetko - Cinematographer, Jonathan Parker - Producer, Catherine di Napoli - Producer, Andreas Olavarria - Producer, Richard Beggs - Sound/Sound Designer, Mamta Trivedi - Unit Production Manager, Jonathan Parker - Screenwriter, Catherine di Napoli - Screenwriter, Patrick Huber - Second Assistant Director, Kay Lee - Set Decorator
Set in the artsy Chelsea, this satirical film centers on a young bohemian avant-garde composer Adrian (Goldberg), who becomes involved with a trendy New York art gallery owner, Madeleine (Shelton). Adrian is a composer who makes music by breaking glass and kicking metal buckets. In contrast to Adrian is his brother Josh (Bailey), a successful painter who happens to bring Madeline to one of his brother's concerts. Madeleine is immediately drawn to Adrian's work and invited him to perform at her gallery and into her bedroom. Eventually, Josh discovers the secret relationship between Madeleine and Adrian, and the fact that Madeleine has been using Josh's paintings, which have commercial appeal, to keep the gallery running while it features more avant-garde work.
Cast
Adam Goldberg as Adrian Jacobs, a young bohemian composer
Marley Shelton as Madeleine Gray, a trendy New York art gallery owner
Jonathan Parker's debut film Bartleby (2001), an updated retelling of the classic Herman Melville tale "Bartleby the Scrivener", was nominated for the Grand Prize at the Deauville Film Festival and was selected to be the opening night film of New York's prestigious New Directors/New Films series. A musician in his youth, Parker is also a collector of the San Francisco school of abstract expressionism, using many of his experiences in both worlds as a basis for (Untitled).
Reception
Reviews
The film received generally mixed to positive reviews from critics. The film currently has a 68% 'Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 18 reviews.[2] In another review, Metacritic reported that 58% of critics gave positive reviews, based on 10 reviews.[3] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly said "The whole cast is museum quality, music and the performances are pitch-perfect in their dissonance. Gary Goldstein of Los Angeles Times called the film "Ace in the best movie satires, there's a solid core of truth Informing director Jonathan Parker's (Untitled), which takes on the New York art and music worlds smart and funny in one swoop." New York Times' Stephen Holden says, "If “(Untitled)” shrewdly hedges its bets about the value of it all, it is ultimately on the side of experimental music and art and their champions, no matter how eccentric. For that alone this brave little movie deserves an audience." The film also received bad reviews like that of Kevin B. Lee Time Out New York which he said "(Untitled) 's onslaught of self-indulgent bohos and art-vs.-commerce cliches are as ersatz as their objects of scorn."
Box office
The film premiered in America on October 23 where it opened in theaters and grossed in its first weekend $18,002.[4]
