I'm not sure how and why I ended up watching two movies in one evening, but I did. Maybe it was a need to procrastinate, maybe it was the "monster storm" that shut down New York and was raging outside.

Both movies would fall under “romance”, improperly called “romantic comedy”. To my mind, “comedy” is something that should at least try to make you laugh, but few movies of this genre make an honest effort in this direction. At best, people watching them stare at the screen with a vague smile and a lost look in their eyes.

The first one I watched, After…, is very forgettable, poorly written, poorly acted and poorly shot. Its start is similar to so many formulaic “lost writer in Paris” movies that are no longer real. Yes, right after the war many American writers lived in Paris, buoyed by rich parents and a very favourable exchange rate; very few still do, because the French disdain for anyone who doesn’t speak French and especially American makes itself known before their fascination with anything American. That’s a turn off even for Canadians, who unless they wear their flag prominently are often mistaken for their southern neighbours.

The lead actors remind me of rejuvenated dead fish. His main talent is looking relaxed and short, while she is supposed to be the fresh Parisian archetype, yet her skin is tired and her voice is coarse-arrogant. If I’d meet her, I wouldn’t meat her, even if my Hepatitis vaccine was current. Considering how old the aforementioned cliché is, it is inexcusable to use adulterated cutlets. Then again, maybe it’s because of the low budget and Parisian prevalence of teenage smoking & drug use.

There is even talk about the current feminization of men and the rise of women to take up their role and not long after we get to watch the two engaged in a Procrustean Bed dialogue, except that he is the whore and she is the Inquirer. Throughout the conversation, he lays on his side with his ass exposed and his head grotesquely raised, with the extra skin on his neck tortuously wrinkled, more so than toilet paper after use. It would be much like the last day on the set of every Spielberg movie, where the director has left the building and the cameraman was filming with her (sic!) eyes closed, except that here the budget is much lower and so are the actors’ abilities and inspiration.

In this age of post porn-explosion fatigue, showing BDSM scenes in what is trying to be a mainstream movie is not “edgy”, it’s lame. So is the Shakespearean ending (by which I mean to say that the idea was better treated by a dude in the XVI century).

LE: I went back and tried to find a bit more info about this movie - it seemed to me that this was bad even by bad movie standards and I wanted to know why. First, the lead actor is also the Writer and Director – no wonder the navel gazing is so ridiculous. Secondly, it’s the sequel to “Fall (1997)”, another hour or so of horse manure, this time staring Scarlett Johansson as a “Little Girl”. That one was seemingly even more of a chick flick than this one. Consider this review:

I felt "Fall" was good enough to tape and see again, every once in a while.To those of you that say they laughed all the way through it, and it would never happen, U're nuts. It happens all the time. Personally, it's been the story of "my" life.It's a fact that women know in the first minute of meeting a guy if she would jump in bed with him.Many romances are a whirlwind...of lust and passion...and sometimes weeks of euphoric passion evaporate,before our eyes...until 2 travel a divided path back into their routine lives.. Many have lusty little secrets that go untapped .Even their best friends might not know. .This is not an uncommon union.It "does" happen in big city life...I don't know how some of your viewers see it as a laughing stock.It's not.And I pity them if they've never have had such a torrid love affair. It's an old Harry Chapin song..."Taxi" .It's very very soft core Andrew Blake...It's poetic,in it's own right. I liked it...and will watch it again.

Written on 4 January 2005 by axo1usa (United States) who gave it 7/10 stars (???)

Secondly, After… is also a “Drama” not a “Dramedy” which is perhaps true in that the drama is that the 1-2 hours you waste watching it will never come back to you. Here’s what a self-described dominatrix had to say about the movie:

Another thing that leads me to suspect that these reviews are ringers is that none of them specifically praise the only person who seemed to be trying to bring this often-implausible script to sincere life - the lead actress, Lizzie Brochere. The only pleasure I was able to derive from this depressing, insulting film occurred when she was on screen. I feel like she really tried to make a decent movie that would be watchable for people other than Eric Schaeffer's friends but was subverted from that end time and time again by Mr. Schaeffer's colossal overestimation of his own ability to arouse sympathy and interest. [my bolding]

Apart from validation (i.e., that Schaeffer is probably a very rich or unbelievably lucky fuck who had the cojones to star and produce in his own porn sold as mainstream / respectable), another thing came out of this investigation: I’ve discovered a movie to watch by the same name, but this time rated with an average of 8 stars. Credited first, Catinca Untaru as Alexandria (trailer, playlist, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). It’s for kids, but it seems as beautiful and imaginative as Unendliche Geschichte or El Labeirinto del Fauno. This is the kind of movies I wanted to watch as a kid, but didn’t get much of.

Since we’re only discovering chick-flicks, on to the second movie...

Sources / More info: imdb-PlP, imdb-fall