Sundance. Blind Date.

"If you're a big fan of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, then I have some potentially good news: the actors' latest film consists of little more than the two of them... sitting in a bar... talking... for about 80 minutes," writes Scott Weinberg at Cinematical. "And since these are a pair of exceedingly fine actors, the experience of Blind Date is not what you'd call unpleasant - but it sure isn't all that exciting."

Updated through 1/28.

"This is a claustrophobic, deliberately anti-realistic picture about a middle-aged married couple (Tucci and Patricia Clarkson) who are so seriously estranged in the aftermath of tragedy that they adopt various unconvincing personas and go on dates as if they've just met," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "Like Steve Buscemi's Interview, which premiered here last year, Blind Date is an adaptation of a film by the late Dutch director Theo van Gogh (who was infamously murdered by an Islamic extremist, an irrelevant but irresistible fact). Both are exercises in nihilism and/or misanthropy set in an artificial nowhere-space, and much as Tucci and Clarkson pour their estimable talents into Blind Date - it has many moments of delicacy, humor and wrenching, unbearable loss - there's only enough oxygen in the film to support a chilly little flame that flickers a little before going out."

Sara Cardace talks with Tucci for New York's Vulture.

Update, 1/25: Online viewing tip. At Zoom In Online, a "Meet the Artists" interview with Tucci.

Update, 1/28: "Blind Date makes the case that serious melodrama is not Tucci's strong suit as a storyteller," writes Steve Ramos at indieWIRE.

Posted by dwhudson at January 24, 2008 9:02 AM