F-0280

Title:

The Anniversary Party

Category:

S

Produced:

2001

Country:

USA

Released:

Film: May 2001 (France, Cannes Film Festival); Jun 2001 (USA)
DVD: Jan 2002
VHS: Jan 2002; Aug 2002
Soundtrack: Jun 2001 (CD)

Director:

Alan Cumming; Jennifer Jason Leigh

Writer:

Jennifer Jason Leigh; Alan Cumming

Actors:

Alan Cumming (Joe Therrian); Jennifer Jason Leigh (Sally Nash); Steven Freedman (Yoga Instructor); Otis (Himself - as Otis the dog); Norizzela Monterroso (America); Clara Demedrano (Rosa); John Benjamin Hickey (Jerry Adams); Parker Posey (Judy Adams); Phoebe Cates (Sophia Gold); Kevin Kline (Cal Gold); Owen Kline (Jack Gold); Greta Kline (Evie Gold); Denis O'Hare (Ryan Rose); Mina Badie (Monica Rose); Jane Adams (Clair Forsyth)

Description:

Love is complex and relationships deteriorate.

Celebrity couple Joe and Sally Therrian are going through yet another rough stage in their six-year marriage: while Joe's novels have been climbing higher and higher on the best-seller lists, Sally's film career has been steadily sinking into oblivion. Joe's been given the rights to cast and direct the screenplay of his latest book, but rather than resurrect Sally's career by casting her in the lead role, he's given it to Sally's rival, Skye Davidson. Even worse, he's invited Skye to their anniversary bash. Will the marriage, or anything else for that matter, survive the party? (Jean-Marc Rocher)

While celebrating their reconciliation and six years of marriage, the American actress Sally Nash (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the British novelist Joe Therrian (Alan Cumming) receive their close friends, some colleagues and their next door neighbors in a party. Under the effect of Ecstasy, revelations are disclosed and relationships deteriorate among the group. (Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

It's easy to be skeptical when a couple of well-connected actors throw a script together, start shooting their fabulous friends with digital cameras, and call it a movie. But Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming, who bonded in Cabaret on Broadway, have crafted a rough little gem in The Anniversary Party. Influenced by Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Player, it's a devastating portrait of a fragile marriage and a perceptive look at life in Hollywood. The characters are based--to an eerie degree--on their Hollywood counterparts: Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates are a Shakespeare-quoting actor and his retired actress wife; Gwyneth Paltrow is a rising young starlet; etc. Leigh is an actress on the way down, and Cumming, a best-selling author and up-and-coming director, is the sexually ambiguous husband with whom she has recently reconciled. The titular party is to celebrate their sixth anniversary, and revelations about the characters accumulate as the evening progresses from a tense session of charades to an ecstasy-pill-fueled blowout by the pool. The screenplay combines brittle humor with melodrama and consists of more talk than action (as in the Dogme films that inspired it), but the proceedings are rarely less than compelling even if the characters, for the most part, aren't exactly the most likable bunch. As a result, Jennifer Beals ends up stealing the show from the bigger names in the cast simply by emerging as the most genuinely human character--the one who actually showed up to honor her friends' commitment rather than to advance her career. (Kathleen C. Fennessy, Amazon.com)

Alan Cumming as a charming but volatile bisexual writer who is about to direct a big-budget movie; Jennifer Jason Leigh as a neurotic actress who screws up her roles by turning everything into tragedy. In Los Angeles, they throw an anniversary party, invite their friends, get tanked, and then take Ecstasy, at which point everything begins to fall apart. Cumming and Jason Leigh wrote and directed this house-party picture together, and shot it quickly in digital video with various friends and colleagues (Kevin Kline, Phoebe Cates, Gwyneth Paltrow, Parker Posey). The movie has the kind of intensity that actors love-scenes of confrontation, breakdown, and self-revelation-but it's neither well-constructed nor particularly original. (David Denby, Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker)

Language:

English

TT:

115 min

J.S. Bach's Music:

Sonata No.1 (Adagio)
Michael Panes

Format:

Film: Color (DeLuxe), Dolby Digital
DVD: See below.
VHS: See below.
Soundtrack: CD

Company:

Film: Fine Line Features; Ghoulardi Film Company; Pas de Quoi
DVD: New Line Home Video
VHS: New Line Home Video
Soundtrack: RCA [CD]

Comments:

Watch selections:

Buy movie at:

DVD: Amazon.com [Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen, NTSC, Region 1] | Amazon.com [NTSC, Region 1] | Amazon.com [PAL, Region 2]
VHS: Amazon.com [Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC] | Amazon.com [Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC] | Amazon.com [Color, NTSC]
Soundtrack: Amazon.com [CD]

DVD>  VHS>
CD>  Poster>

Source/Links: IMDB
Contributor: Aryeh Oron (November 2007)