Somewhere in the City
Based on Maxim Gorky's play The Lower Depths and writer/director Ramin
Niami's own experience of living in the Big Apple, Somewhere in the City
plays for dark comedy as it follows the depraved, intertwined travails of
residents in a Lower East Side tenement building. The offbeat cast of
characters includes a loquacious therapist looking for Mr. Right (Sandra
Bernhard looking strained against her persona), a subdued Chinese immigrant
(Bai Ling) trying to arrange a fixed marriage in order to obtain a green card,
a sexy maid (Italian bombshell Ornella Muti) who for some reason services the
building's fat slob of a superintendent daily, the dapper thief (Robert John
Burke) who botches every job, and a crew of revolutionaries in the basement
searching for a cause.
Niami's low-budget romp offers a few peaks of smart witted humor -- be it the
kidnapping of former mayor Ed Koch or Ling's English barrier with her suitors
-- but for the most part it's a series of loosely connected vignettes that lack
character development and tempo. The film is simply a goofy house of games; as
a result Somewhere in the City goes nowhere.
-- Tom Meek
|