I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Great Film overall

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

I've seen this movie a number of times, and it still has the ability to raise questions and provoke discussions for me. There are so many possibilities that are never definitively answered. SPOILERS AHEAD: For example, when Madeleine looks at Oliver's wallet, does she find his identification, proving he's not the movie director, and she goes on pretending to believe he is? Why was the supervisor of the homeless shelter so willing to accept the baseless accusations of the others against a man who wasn't there to defend himself? Why does Oliver leave Madeleine looking sad that he's seemingly rejected her, as they were about to make love? Was he just unable to go on with the pretense anymore? And what is the exact relationship between Madeleine and the guy who seems to be her ex-husband? He appears to be living downstairs in the same building, but it wasn't all that clear. The true point is, of course, the fundamental loneliness of human existence, and the need to reach out and make a connection with others, something that Madeleine and Oliver experienced briefly. I feel the seduction scene between the somewhat intoxicated Madeleine, and the slightly less intoxicated Oliver ,is both strange and hilarious. You really don't know where that scene is going for a while. At first, I thought she was being cruel,and really putting him down, as she was obviously taken aback by the true story he told her. But when she leaned into him and touched her forehead to his ,and claimed, in a goofy dramatic voice, that she had drugged his drink with something that would turn him into a potted plant, as she had done with her other victims, and he grabbed her and began kissing her, leading to the staircase seduction, with them mostly dressed ,and she on top, I realized I'd seen something truly original. Recommended for viewers who enjoy a slow, thoughtful kind of movie, that makes you think a lot about apparently small stuff that's actually pretty important in our lives.

I loved the beginning--the way you can't quite tell what the setting is, or who the main character is...the story is out of focus the way the world is to Oliver when he takes his glasses off.At the beginning, it stated somewhere that this film was based on a story called "Ate, Memos: the Miracle". All while watching it, I kept trying to figure out what the memos were. A lot of the film was in blue and orange. I wonder what those colors meant to the producer?When they were telling each other those stories, Oliver's was true but Madeleine didn't know it (although at first I thought she did)--and Madeleine made hers up, but Oliver thought she was telling the truth (and so did I!).That husband of hers was really scary. What was he trying to do? I didn't quite catch the story about the ex-husband and the couple in the shower, but it probably was supposed to connect with the scene where the plant was in the shower.That scene on the street when they run into the other men from the shelter was really weird--very spooky and unreal the way Oliver was suspended between them and Madeleine. Must have seemed that way to him, too. Lots of blue and orange there, too. When Oliver paid for their meals at the diner, I knew their relationship was doomed. How could he afford to keep up the pretense?What was the significance of those plants behind plastic in the bedroom? Did they represent Oliver? He was half dead (spiritually, anyhow), Madeleine brings him home and revives him, but doesn't really see him. It's like she's looking at him through not very clear plastic.Madeleine looked like Manet's Olympia, the way she was posed on the bed at the end.....I wish I knew what happened between Oliver's gazing at her there and ending up back on the street. Did she see that fax and realize that he was an imposter? Or did she know already and not care? Could he have told her the truth before he left? Was she using him, thinking of course that he was a producer? It didn't seem like a love story to me, just a couple of unhappy people who got caught in a time warp together.The saddest part was watching Oliver warming his hands on her radiator, knowing that he was going to be on the street all night in the cold, because it was past curfew. I wonder if that one day of being considered a "real" (read: not homeless) person was worth losing his place at the shelter. I expect Madaleine probably went back to England and Oliver managed to pull himself together, find some sort of a life.....but changed, of course!I really want to see it again and try to figure some of this out.

The film's gritty outer-borough images of Queens, familiar to any born and bred New Yorker, got my attention instantly. But it was the film's two principal characters--both middle-aged, both survivors of difficult lives--that sustained it. He, an out-of-work middle management type, is a victim of corporate downsizing now living in a homeless shelter among a multiethnic, multiracial horde of down-and-outers, where he struggles to maintain bare-minimum standards of privacy and personal hygiene--and where remnants of his middle-class life set him apart from his surroundings. She, a faded beauty and still-struggling actress, maintains an oddly genteel life in a rundown two-family house nearby, surrounded by weedy lots and shuttered factories. As they meet and proceed to remove their masks, a kind of love story--brief, impossible, and ultimately doomed, is ignited. This is a beautifully shot and acted film, and a deeply affecting one.

I went to see this movie because I know the producer Amy Hobby. I was very pleasantly surprised at what a nice film it is- a look at two lonely people who meet for a day and are a little better for knowing one another. The sound was muddled on the print I saw- but the overall effect was a nice film for an afternoon- honest filmmaking with people who look real, not the pretty boys of Hollywood... if you see it at the video store rent it for a pleasant experience.