Director Rory Kelly's ("Sleep With Me") second feature deals with young people in L.A. and their dysfunctional romantic relationships -- not exactly a fresh topic on the indie scene these days.
But some funny dialogue and appealing performances by a top-flight cast of up-and-comers make "Some Girls" a sporadically engaging experience. It was recently showcased at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival.
Marissa Ribisi, who also co-wrote the script, plays the central role of Claire, a vibrant redheaded poet looking for that most elusive of commodities, unconditional love. She thinks she may have found it with Chad (Jeremy Sisto), a good-looking actor with a particularly seductive bedroom technique. Unfortunately, according to Claire's friend April (Juliette Lewis), "Chads are bad news."
April herself is particularly screwed up, engaging in a series of one-night stands despite having a steady boyfriend (Michael Rapaport) who dotes on her. He's so agreeable, in fact, that she calls him to pick her up from various men's apartments. She's the type of woman who suffers head injuries from bedposts.
Other characters in the romantic roundelay include Suzanne (Kristin Dattilo), a struggling artist; Jason (Giovanni Ribisi), Claire's geeky younger brother; and the older, unattainable woman he has the hots for, Jenn (Pamela Segall), a rock music promoter.
The rambling screenplay mainly serves as an excuse for a series of alternately comic and woeful conversations about the difficulties of love and contains what must be the thousandth scene in recent years in which young woman discuss the intricacies of performing oral sex. This educational theme is further explored in another, more inventive scene in which Jason details the inner workings of female sex organs using a piece of carved fruit.
"Some Girls" suffers from an occasional preciousness and a tendency toward pretension, and its characters engage in some questionable behavior for a comedy; to get revenge on her cheating boyfriend, for example, Claire sets fire to his house, an act treated here in alarmingly lighthearted fashion. But, thanks to the incisive performances by the talented cast, the characters by the film's end will have gotten under your skin in a way you may not have anticipated.
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