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Indie flicks
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 18, 2002
Getting a grip on happiness
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (R) (104 min.) -- The topic at hand is happiness, the randomness of where it comes from and how quickly it can end. Director Jill Sprecher (Clockwatchers) traces the seemingly unrelated paths of urban dwellers chasing dreams, always running into reality checkpoints. Those paths do cross, briefly but with fateful consequences in a sharply written, superbly acted film.
We are dropped into these lives with casual precision. Troy (Matthew McConaughey, left) is a dedicated prosecutor celebrating in a bar, bragging about winning a conviction and baiting a grouch named Gene (Alan Arkin, right). Gene cautions that being happy is a curse, which seems to come true when Troy hits a pedestrian with his car and he leaves the scene to avoid a DUI charge or worse.
Gene's pessimism springs from his job, his junkie son and bad neighbors, and he becomes so soured on life that he mistrusts a co-worker (William Wise) nicknamed Smiley for his perpetual good mood. Nobody can be that happy without hiding something, so Gene decides to wipe that smile off his face.
Meanwhile, a physics professor named Walker (John Turturro) is a recent mugging victim, turning that event into a life-altering experience. His happiness will come at the expense of his marriage to Patricia (Amy Irving), but that greener pasture he seeks might be a mirage. The only character in Sprecher's film appearing to have it all together is Beatrice (Clea DuVall), a young apartment cleaner who believes she was saved from drowning as a child for some reason that's about to be revealed. The screenplay by the director and her sister, Karen Sprecher, is a marvel of entwined coincidences, tinkering with the time frame to show how many of these lives intersect, then move on. Lines of dialogue link the characters without them knowing, as if their preoccupations with luck, destiny and defeat are part of some collective unconscious they all share. "Fortune smiles on some and laughs at others," Gene grumbles, perhaps in only the time it takes to check a lottery ticket or be distracted on a street corner.
The performances are top-notch. Even McConaughey erases the bad memories of his recent work with an effectively stunned portrayal. But this movie should be a reminder to everyone about Arkin's acting gifts. He makes Gene appear ruthless, yet rueful, a reluctant party pooper who still enjoys that result too much to be benign. Sprecher often locks him into close-ups, allowing a master of reactionary acting to move the story along with only his face. This is another terrific performance from one of the most underrated talents of the past 40 years, in one of the best films of this one. A
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