An inviting cast makes this 'Party'
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Fueled by diet pills, alcohol and Ecstasy, and by an all-star cast playing variations of themselves, "The Anniversary Party" saucily dramatizes and pokes fun at a Hollywood Hills all-nighter.
The occasion is the sixth anniversary of Joe and Sally Therian, played by the film's writing-directing team, Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh. He's a writer, she's an actress, and they're back together after a separation. Right from the beginning, it looks like they're trying to solve their marital problems by having a child, and there's some doubt as to whether either is grown-up enough to deal with it.
The party is as much about networking and deal-making as it is about recognizing a shaky marriage, as Sally learns when Joe invites an up-and-coming actress, Skye Davidson (Gwyneth Paltrow), who may be ideal casting for the leading role in Joe's new movie. Sally assumes the part is based on her, but Joe thinks she's too old to play it. Also aging but interested in a role is Cal Gold (Kevin Kline), who arrives at the party with his wife, Sophie (Phoebe Cates), and children.
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The picture - which was the opening-night offering at this year's Seattle International Film Festival - occasionally resembles something the actors dreamed up on the spot. There's a home-movie aspect to the digital-video images, and a hall-of-mirrors quality to the casting of Kline as an Oscar-winning ham, Cates as his retiring wife, Beals as a photographer, Cumming as a first-time director and Leigh as an actress who always gets passed over at the Oscars. The appearance of Michael Panes as a Peter Sellers look-alike and sound-alike instantly recalls the 1968 Sellers comedy, "The Party," in which Sellers tried out a similarly outrageous Indian accent.
What distinguishes "The Anniversary Party" from the movies/lives that inspired it is the dead-on quality of much of the writing and acting. Skye, who is barely 25, casually mentions being "in rehab the second time" as if she'd been through the experience a dozen times. Doped up and sprawling on the kitchen floor, Sophie and Sally have a hilarious heart-to-heart about Joe's suitability for fatherhood. "You can't do yourself in," Sophie claims, "kids rob you of that option."
Gushing that "this room is so filled with love," Skye refuses to register the selfish nature of most of the characters, whose behavior, as Joe observes, is "way past inappropriate."
"The Anniversary Party" does eventually run into third-act problems, throwing in a near-drowning, an unexpected overdose and a cruel revelation that's uncomfortably reminiscent of the finale of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" It doesn't need these last-minute excursions into melodramatic territory. It's sharp enough on its own turf.
John Hartl can be reached at johnhartl@yahoo.com.