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[Short Reviews]

THE LOW DOWN

Here’s the prototypal dreary evening: your friends are stoned, you’re straight, and you just can’t comprehend why they believe their pallid, empty conversation is so hilarious, so profound. That’s the feeling I got watching The Low Down, in which the youthful British ensemble act as if they were on to something moving and meaningful even as scene after scene is about nothing and goes nowhere. Here’s the tidbit of a story: Frank (Aidan Gillen of Channel 4’s Queer As Folk) works in a London shop building papier-mâché props for TV programs. He goofs around with his co-workers (many, many flat, chatty scenes). He meets Ruby (Kate Ashfield) and they lie around his apartment Seberg-Belmondo Breathless fashion, until one day she’s had enough. The actors are all photogenic and probably talented, but nothing they do in here advances beyond an acting-class improv. Blame indulgent writer/director Jamie Thraves for persuading everyone that the trivial, almost incoherent talk shimmers with the stuff of life (the press book explains that Thraves is a Cassavetes fan) and that the pretentiously oblique camerawork has visual significance (Thraves swears by Jean-Luc Godard).

By Gerald Peary

Issue Date: April 19-26, 2001





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