Storytelling

Two separate stories. In the first, a creative writing student brings a violent sexual encounter with her Black professor into class as a story, and the class finds it unrealistic. In the second, an unemployed man starts making a documentary about the teenage son of a wealthy family, and the more his camera exposes how ugly the family is, the more his film is admired. The subject is not the characters but the act of telling. The moment you narrate something you have used it, and both parts show that from different angles. The documentary's audience laughs at the pain on screen, and the director does not treat that as an accident. The form proceeds through a hard break between the two parts, with no connection made between them, deliberately. What the film is most remembered for is a censorship decision. In the American version the scene with the professor is covered on screen by an enormous red rectangle, to avoid an NC-17 rating. Rather than hide the box, Solondz made it gigantic and turned censorship itself into the joke. The international version has no box, and the American DVD carries both options. Selma Blair, Leo Fitzpatrick, Paul Giamatti and Robert Wisdom are in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like uncomfortable satire and Solondz's cold humour. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a character to sympathise with; the film defends nobody and gives the audience no rest either.