(Untitled) movie review & film summary (2009)
This musician is named Adrian Jacobs (Adam Goldberg), a bearded thirtysomething who seems to have chugged a pint of bile. A good audience for him might consist of two dozen people; some walk out and the rest stare incredulously at the stage. One day his brother Josh (Eion Bailey) brings a date to his concert. This is Madeleine Gray (Marley Shelton), who runs a very, very avant-garde art gallery in Soho. Adrian asks he if can borrow her dress. It's made of shiny black plastic, it squeaks when she walks, and he thinks he can use the sound in his music.
"(Untitled)" is a comedy worthy of the best Woody Allen, and Adrian is not unlike Woody's persona: a sincere, intense, insecure nebbish, hopeless with women, aiming for greatness. He plays classical piano brilliantly, and with contempt. If his "serious" work appeals to very few people, that's too many for him. Josh, however, is raking in the dough with his canvases, which are snatched up in volume for the lobbies of hotels.
The movie plunges fearlessly but not brainlessly into the world of art so cutting edge it has run out of edges. Remember Damien Hirst, the British artist who inspired a firestorm when he won the Turner Prize for such works as a shark preserved in formaldehyde? One of Madeleine's clients is Ray Barko (Vinnie Jones), whose art consists of a dead cat splayed on a wall, a goose apparently buried in a wall up to its wings, and a montage for a monkey and vacuum cleaner. A rich client (Zak Orth) eats up this stuff. Lots of people do. I don't know if they enjoy it as much as I love my Edward Lear watercolors. Maybe they love it more.
Madeleine hires Adrian and his musicians to perform at her gallery, as "conceptual art." Well, I once attended a poetry reading featuring a revolving fan. Madeleine goes nuts for Adrian, and he finds her hard to resist because everything she wears makes noise. She seems to conceal a sound-effects artist in her knickers. Adrian tunes in; the soundtrack subtly enhances what he hears. They grow chummy. He attends Madeleine's opening for an artist named Monroe, played by an actor named Ptolemy Slocum, whose own name is a work of art. Meanwhile, Josh's insipid work (pastels of vague shapes adorned by small circles) supports the gallery, but Madeleine keeps them in the back room. He "doesn't need" a gallery opening, she explains. She hates them, is what it is.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46upa2hpKGypXmRaWdy