Expired.

"Despite Expired's many flaws, give writer-director Cecilia Miniucchi points for gamely tackling an almost unworkable conceit in her romantic-comedy debut: the awkward courtship of two thoroughly incompatible people," writes Tim Grierson in the Voice. "Homely, withdrawn Claire (doe-eyed Samantha Morton) leads a dull life as a Santa Monica meter maid, until she attracts the attention of Jay (Jason Patric), a fellow parking official whose two most notable features are his bushy mustache and his raging, paranoid misanthropy."

"A brutally funny and relentlessly squirm-inducing film about neuroses, loneliness, and love, Expired posits the traffic cop as the nadir of self-esteem and the constant recipient of abuse and disgust," writes Leo Goldsmith at indieWIRE. "Miniucchi's direction of the film's tone is pitch-perfect - a strange, but deft mix of farcical and naturalistic."

Updated through 6/22.

"Morton is one of those tingly actresses whose skin barely covers her soul, and to watch her search for tender mercies in a crazy-hostile world is a gift," writes David Edelstein in New York. "The film is appallingly good."

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Miniucchi "about her own experiences with parking attendants, the illustrious directors she has worked with, and fleeing a location after it was trashed by gang bangers."

Update: "Emotional investment in this unhealthy romance is aided rather than impeded by an intentional mood of off-center strangeness, which consistently blends heartfelt pathos and caustic humor," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "In a mesmerizing performance, Patric gets surprisingly robust mileage from his character's sentence-to-sentence vacillation between amorous warmth and unfiltered assholishness."

Update, 6/20: "The funny, sad, offbeat, sometimes off-the-beat romance Expired is one of those precariously balanced movies that might fall to pieces with a different cast," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "It's possible that two actors other than Samantha Morton and Jason Patric might do justice to Cecilia Miniucchi's story... But it's hard to think of a better match for the stubborn idiosyncrasies of Ms Miniucchi's visual style and worldview than these two."

Update, 6/21: For the New York Times, John Anderson profiles an evidently lovable director: "The cast features Teri Garr and Illeana Douglas, and its credits include the couturière and installation artist Swinda Reichelt; the guitarist Andy Summers of the Police; 'special thanks' to the filmmakers Marc Forster, Jeremy Podeswa and Larry Gross; and, as producer, Fred Roos, who has The Godfather II and Apocalypse Now on his résumé and said he was attracted both by the strength of Ms Miniucchi's script 'and my affection for her.'" What's more, "It was [Lina] Wertmüller who drafted Ms Miniucchi into the world of Italian cinema, hiring her after a chance meeting on an elevator in Rome."

Update, 6/22: Choire Sicha chats with Illeana Douglas for the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at June 19, 2008 8:19 AM