Surviving Desire

Funny, but it felt unfulfilled and increasingly disconnected toward the end. The final scene was the kicker, in terms of disaffectedness. It seemed increasingly abrupt and unlinked, toward the end. Strong start, weakish finish. I liked all the actors and actresses, though; I'd watch it over, again, just for Rebecca Nelson.

What can art do measure fictive love against the genuine article?

Find out in a film that is sweeping the nation! Starring Martin Donovan as a classy professor in "Hot for Teacher." Just kidding. This ain't no "Elegy."

In true Hartley fashion, the film is populated with intensely articulate characters. Where the wordy, rapid-fire dialogues of 30's-40's screwballs are a source of great comedy, Hartley has us asking why the presence of a verbose, everyman philosopher around each corner is so strange. So unconventional as to draw us out of a Hollywood style naturalism that is so effective at proxying for reality.

Love is hard. Even in the idyll of the academic hamlet. In a tale as old as time, the bumbling professor Jude leaves us free to perform our own errands of love in search of a less "contrived nature."

Can fiction truly guide us? It's better than groping around in the dark.

(Five stars for the dance sequence alone.)

Love it! will recommend to all friends who like to think they are intelligent

Awesome, I want to hang out with people this intense...

"God, I wish we lived in RENO!"

This film is the same length as a premium TV episode, but gives you a whole different experience from anything on TV right now. There is something so nice about a self-contained piece of work that is not scrambling to produce plot twists, or deliberately leaving loose ends to be attended to in a season finale. I like TV once in a while, but this is different. Every moment of SURVIVING DESIRE is enthralling, despite the protagonist's DiCaprio-circa-BASKETBALL-DIARIES-haircut and the mildly abrasive soundtrack.

Many lines are great, such as: His weaknesses are endearing; his strengths threaten to eclipse my own self-confidence. He eats out. A lot.

With quick, witty dialogue, SURVIVING DESIRE seems like a strange, cerebral extension of John
Hughes that maintains the humor but kicks up the sincerity a bit. It makes me think that if my high school-self were tragically more sophisticated… this would be the movie that version of me would have made.