A Life More Ordinary

film review, 4/7/99

Unmade Beds

(1998, dir. Nicholas Barker)

Ah, New York City. The singles scene. Dating. Mating. Orgasms without relationships; relationships without kids. All those beautiful people partyin’ down at the latest drum-and-bass club, or that swanky new bistro, all in the tightest, smartest new designer come-hither-wear.

Or, maybe, something a little more ordinary.

Unmade Beds, a documentary that’s already aired on Cinemax and has just arrived in U.S. theaters, presents the New York that people who look up to New York try to forget about. It’s like the more depressing episodes ofSeinfeld without the gags. It reveals some Manhattanites who are just as plain and/or pathetic as Manhattanites sometimes stereotype other Americans as being.

First-time, U.K.-bred director Nicholas Barker’s video cameras capture four heavily-accented Jewish and Italian-American N.Y.C.-ers (Brenda, Michael, Aimee, and Mikey), all well into middle age and all boasting of their supposed super street smarts. They’re all driven by the urge-to-merge, but have never found the love life they’ve sought (whether it be a wife for Michael, a harem of swinger chicks for Mikey, a trophy boyfriend for Aimee, or a sugar daddy for Brenda).

Some reviews have claimed some of the movie’s scenes were scripted. I don’t mind. These are still real people playing themselves. If a few preplanned scenes (such as the shots of the female subjects seen dressing through apartment windows) help to tell their tales, so be it. And if working with Barker on what they were going to say on-camera helped them get their messages across, fine. It may have helped them maintain their edgy attitude, to not be shown trying to think up a statement in “real time.”

But then again, it’s their well-practiced “Attitudes” that (as Barker shows but doesn’t tell) helps keep them alone.

The much-detracted last Seinfeld referred to its starring characters as “The New York Four,” and had other characters denounce them as cold-hearted mockers devoid of empathy or substance. Barker’s own New York Four (who are never seen with one another, thus accentuating their solitude among the millions) are depicted less as cold-hearted and more as hard-hearted. The closest we get to a verbal statement about what we see within these people is when somebody tells Michael during a party scene, “You’re giving off these negative vibes that make you unattractive to people.”

Otherwise, Barker lets his camera and his cast’s own (albeit sometimes pre-written) words show off their common fatal character flaw. These are characters who’ve grown up and grown old tough and sharp, who don’t take anything from anybody. There’s no room in their worlds for any of that sissy soft stuff, like sympathy or tears.

Nobody ever fucks with these people. So it’s sad, yet unsurprising, that nobody ever fucks with these people.