Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

With The Anniversary Party, a gang of actors have done away with those "tiresome" middle-men that slow the acting process down - writers, directors, and movie cameras - and shot, edited, and sold a commercial product using digital video to Fine Line Features. There's the semblance of a story and thin veneers of characters on display - but, essentially, The Anniversary Party has been thrown together to showcase the actingness of acting. This might sound rather dismissive, as if The Anniversary Party is an avoid-at-all costs mess. But far from it.

Actors are crucial co-authors of the filmmaking process and to see their contributions to the filmmaking process distilled - in virtual isolation - from the collaborative voices of the other traditional authoring artists is an entirely interesting experiment. This project was conceived by wacky British actor Alan Cumming (he played the vicar in Emma and the cross-dressing freak in Plunkett & Macleane) and wacked-out American actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (who has sporatically been effective in movies like Dolores Claibourne and Short Cuts).

"We thought it would be nice to make a film with friends, shoot it quickly...do a mainstream film in a non-mainstream way," Cumming explains on www.alancumming.com.

The Coat-Hanger

The "mainstream" plot of this off-beat "film" centers around a couple of Laurel Canyon dwellers, Joe Therrian and Sally Nash (Cumming & Leigh), who have recently reunited after a year-long separation and are celebrating their 6th anniversary with a gathering of friends and others.

Joe is a novelist who has adapted one of his own books for the screen and just scored a green-light to direct it himself from a major studio. (HO-HA! Like, when would THAT ever happen?!?) A major up-and-coming young actress (Gwyneth Paltrow) has been attached to star in it (her salary alone is $4 million); she is one of the guests at the party, much to Sally's bitter chagrin. Sally is a formerly major actress who has been out of circulation for a while and is currently shooting a comeback comedy with an Academy-Award-winning actor (Kevin Kline), directed by a a celebrated filmmaker (John C. Reilly). They are also guests at the party, as are their respective wives, a retired-actress-turned-mother (Phoebe Cates) and a new-mother-but-still-working-actress (Jane Adams). Several old friends are also in attendance, among them Joe's life-long best friend, a photographer (Jennifer Beals, from Flashdance) and Sally & Joe's business managers (John Benjamin Hickey and Parker Posey).

These characters, however, are really just coat-hangers for the actors to hang their craft on. You don't connect the actors to their parts in The Anniversary Party; you scrutinize the performances, looking for frisson points to connect them to the real-life actors.

The Actor's Party

Who stands out? Who gets to stretch? Who gets screen time and creative space to shine without having to wait for some donkey casting director to wake up to their gifts? That is, after all, what we are primarily here to see.

Starting at the top of the food chain, Oscar winners Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love) and Kevin Kline (A Fish Called Wanda) are obviously playing the closest things to themselves they are comfortable revealing to the public. Paltrow gushes about humbly, charmingly, and Kline deadpans wittily, generously. Both stars are relaxed and natural, just what is needed for the "home movie" feel of The Anniversary Party.

There is no other actress quite like Phoebe Cates (best remembered as the teenage sensation from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Gremlins). Hollywood has never known how to make use of her gifts; back on the big screen after a considerable absence, it's clear that even her friends Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh don't quite known how to utilize her either. But there's one great scene - probably the best scene in all of The Anniversary Party - that gives us a shining hint: Phoebe and Jennifer chase each other around the house, tripping on Ecstasy, whipping from tears to laughter faster than the cars in The Fast and the Furious get from point A to point B.

Jane Adams (you might recognize her from Happiness) makes quite an impression, letting every neurotic nerve she's got hang WAY out; it's a scene-stealing performance. Mina Badie, as the neighbor, is a newcomer and is extremely watchable: she has beautiful nuances on screen. John Reilly is very believable as a director; since he appeared in Casualties of War, directed by Brian de Palma, I imagined him basing his performance on de Palma's personality; the fear is certainly there. Even if I'm totally off-base and he didn't even think of de Palma once while shooting The Anniversary Party, it's still terrific work.

Alan Cumming is a great joy. Think Robin Williams crossed with punk rocker Adam Ant and you get an idea of Cumming's energy; his dream role in the school play must have been Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In The Anniversary Party, he's deliriously cracked but real and frighteningly human - playing "novelist", he's watchful and polymorphously perverse in his orchestrations of his friends and neighbors. (And lovers.) This pixie man should be on everybody's guest list.

Jennifer Jason Leigh has always been fascinating to watch for the repelling darkness of her characters - a darkness palpable from great distances away, which is exactly how most movie audiences like her: far away, in Hollywood, not a part of their lives. But in The Anniversary Party, we are asked to believe not only that Alan Cumming would marry Jennifer Jason Leigh, but that he would be heartbroken for the year that they separated, AND come back to her to try again and start a family. This, unfortunately, is too much of a stretch.

The Anniversary Party

Giving all these talented performers room to flex their creative muscle was a great boon. But as a film, The Anniversary Party has a great many shortcomings.

The main purpose of digital video appears to be to greater democratize the means of production, which I realize is the point of The Anniversary Party. Unfortunately, it does nothing to enhance the art of cinematography, and this is the first noticeable drag on the entertainment value of the project.

The second noticeable drag is the lack of thematic purpose for the film. It is a relationship drama, yes; but what is it saying about modern relationships? There appears to be no definitive point of view other than to portray the central romantic relationship as an interaction where lessons of pain and forgiveness take place for the two lead characters. This is not terribly big news.

There is a lot of drama that is unfathomable and impenetrable for the audience of The Anniversary Party. For instance, if Alan Cumming's "novelist" has some twisted sickness that attracts him to Leigh's "fragile neurotic", it is not revealed by the film, an unfortunate failing. Our sympathy diminishes as The Anniversary Party progresses for these two people who are so sadly matched. The catalytic death (of an off-screen character!!!) that ends the film rings hollow as we have ceased trying to comprehend why either of these two leads feel what they feel.

This lack of vision has a result I'm not sure was intended: a pessimistic fin-de-civilisation judgement call, a la Short Cuts or Magnolia.

A true writer or director may not have been able to satisfactorily solve these shortcomings, but they certainly would have been a hell of a lot more aware of them. The Anniversary Party is VERY solipsistic: the actors who made it cast actors in the parts of actors but don't bother to cast a real novelist in the part of the novelist or a real film director in the part of the film director. They just cast more actors.

I liked Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh's Cassavetes-esque experiment, but ultimately can't recommend it as satisfying entertainment. If they'd gone further with their "home movie" concept it might have had some real daring and made some unconscious commentary on the moral psyches of these entertainment folk, circa the turn-of-the-century. It might have been really fascinating - casting real-life business managers in the part of the business managers, etc., etc. But The Anniversary Party, as it is, stops short of going for the gusto.



Recommended: No