Choose Me

Alan Rudolph's 1984 film gathers several lonely people around a nightclub. Eve, who owns the club, Nancy, who presents a radio show giving relationship advice, and Mickey, who says he has just left a psychiatric hospital, enter each other's lives by chance. What people say and what they do keep contradicting each other; everyone is lying about themselves, and the film treats that not as a mystery but as an observation about how people construct each other. Rudolph, who came up alongside Robert Altman, works in a comparable way: characters connect as a web, dialogue overlaps like real speech. Neon light and Teddy Pendergrass songs give it a particular atmosphere. It holds a cult place in eighties American independent film. Who it's for: viewers who like atmosphere-led films with a loose structure. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a clear plot and definite information about who these characters really are.