
Stars:
Mark Ruffalo,
Kathleen Robertson,
Maya Stange,
Kel O'Neill,
Zach Shaffer
Director:
Austin Chick
Summary: Three college students, two girls and one boy, meet at a party and immediately strike up an intense relationship. The bond between them is tested when two of the three become romantically involved and soon everything falls apart and they lose contact. Eight years later they meet again and despite varying relationships with other people in between they are drawn together again...
Writer-director Austin Chick's first feature film is almost two films rolled into one. The dark, grainy first half with its choppy style introduces would-be filmmaker Coles (Mark Ruffalo), mild-mannered Samantha (Maya Stange), and self-destructive Thea (Kathleen Robertson). Coles meets the two friends at a Sarah Lawrence College in the early 1990s, and the three spend a night together that is ultimately awkward. But Coles and Samantha seem to have found true love, and the couple embarks on the kind of tempestuous relationship so common during the college years. The brighter, more conventionally shot second half of the film--which is also imbued with more comic relief--is set ten years later. Coles works in advertising and is in a stable relationship with Clare (Petra Wright), Thea is happily married and a successful restaurateur, and Sam has just returned to New York City from London having broken off her engagement. With their past love affair looming in the background, Sam and Coles are both forced to confront the past and the future, and to make some tough decisions about their lives. Chick's debut is an interesting experiment in style and structure.