Friends with Money: Star-Telegram article

[Gillian]

With films like 'Friends,' fest could survive hype
By CHRISTOPHER KELLY
STAR-TELEGRAM FILM CRITIC

PARK CITY, Utah -- So much for global warming: The snow was already falling here on Thursday afternoon, and the temperatures were expected to drop into the single digits over the weekend. But that doesn't seem to have deterred anyone from swooping into this tiny resort village for the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, where struggling filmmakers bump up against the Hollywood elite in hopes of soon joining their ranks. If the mob scene at the Salt Lake City airport was any indication, this already gridlocked festival may enter a state of complete paralysis before the week is out.

Part of this is because Sundance, especially in recent years, is no longer just a launching pad for movies. Over the course of the festival's nine days, dozens of companies, from Volkswagen to Hewlett-Packard to the W Hotels chain, will host parties or set up makeshift boutiques along Main Street. What exactly does the W Las Vegas Poker Invitational, which takes place Sunday, have to do with independent film? Absolutely nothing. Ditto the Volkswagen "Celebrity Gift Retreat," which sounds less like a film festival event than a sign of the apocalypse.

The inevitable question: Can the movies possibly be heard above the din of all this hype?

Well, if they're as good as Friends With Money, the opening-night film, the answer is yes. Directed by Nicole Holofcener (Lovely & Amazing, Walking and Talking), one of the brightest talents working in movies today, Friends With Money follows a group of friends in their late 30s and early 40s who are wrestling with the familiar anxieties of divorce, career, romance and depression. Holofcener's movies are very much of our self-obsessed, therapy-obsessed era -- she traffics in the neuroses of privileged people who can't stop thinking that the grass is always greener on someone else's perfectly manicured lawn.

But if Friends With Money occasionally risks becoming whiny or precious (and if lead Jennifer Aniston is perhaps the least convincing pothead maid imaginable), Holofcener's observations about modern life are often startling. And she's assembled an extraordinary ensemble, including Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, Jason Isaacs and Scott Caan, with one performance more razor-sharp than the next. (It will open in theaters in April.)

At this festival, where art and commerce often wage war, Friends With Money seemed an especially telling opening-night selection. This is hardly an "indie" movie -- it has an A-list cast, and it shouldn't have trouble finding a mainstream audience. But in the modern film economy -- where unless it features a giant ape or a talking lion, a movie gets dispatched to the art houses -- the space for truly independent voices may be drying up altogether. Among the 16 films in this year's dramatic competition are ones starring Paul Giamatti, Ryan Gosling, Ashley Judd and Robert Downey Jr. The general feeling these days is that unless a brand-name actor is attached, it's almost impossible to get offbeat subject matter financed, even if the project is low-budget.

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