(2009) Fully clothed, Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin Phoenix) jumps over a fence on the wharf into the bay before resurfacing and getting pulled out by a passerby. He goes home to his parents' apartment in Brooklyn, with whom he resides.

Over for dinner and discussion of merging their dry-cleaning businesses, Michael Cohen (Bob Ari) brings his wife and two offspring, Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) and younger brother David, to the home of Reuben (Moni Moshonov) and Ruth Kraditor (Isabella Rossellini); Sandra ("I wanted to meet you") makes acquaintance with Lenny, who shows her the black-and-white photographs he's taken as a hobby.

They are two adults still living with their parents, having difficulties making their own way into the world; two years earlier Lenny's fiancé left him after a blood test indicated they were incompatible for having children, after which he tried to commit suicide by slashing his wrists. He takes pills; Sandra works for Pfizer.

In the corridor of the building, Lenny meets Michelle Rausch (Gwyneth Paltrow), who has recently taken a flat across the courtyard from Lenny's room. With her long blonde hair and casual attire, looking like a folkie from Greenwich Village, she latches onto Leonard like a sister to a long-lost brother, going clubbing with him and chatting on her cellphone as they gaze at each other from their windows.

She works as an assistant in a law office where she's become involved with an older, married man, Ronald Blatt (Elias Koteas), a partner in the firm, who's paying the rent on her apartment; she asks Leonard to join them for dinner at a restaurant for his opinion of Ronald, who asks Lenny to keep his eye on Michelle because of her history with drugs. Lenny ignores Sandra's cellphone messages.

This bleak romance from director James Gray (co-writer with Ric Menello) might have been Leonard's sad tale to his future children of "how I met your mother." When Sandra stops by on an evening when Lenny's alone (their parents celebrating her father's birthday), apologetic of having assumed he might have been interested in her (she desperately wants to take care of him), he suddenly makes her feel as if she's become the woman in his life.

On the roof of their building, Michelle asks Lenny: "Do you think he's going to be with me for good?" While Ronald's not likely to give up his family, Lenny declares: "I'd definitely leave everything for you."

At Sandra's brother's bar mitzvah, where Leonard's taking photographs, he receives a desperate call from Michelle that she's bleeding and needs him to take her to the hospital because she can't get in touch with Ronald. He's there when she needs him; Mr Cohen expects Leonard's intentions toward Sandra are honorable.

On New Year's Eve he has airline tickets and an engagement ring for Michelle, which he hurls toward the surf, toward which he walks disconsolately. It's neither a comedy nor a tragedy but altogether dreadfully irksome.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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