Alison Brie and the Girls. (YouTube)

We imagine that anyone who attended The Girls show in L.A. earlier this week was reminded of that Kurt Vonnegut quote from Slaughterhouse-Five: "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, and there was no soft-shoeing from Daniel Radcliffe, thank God." Community and Mad Men star Alison Brie--also known as being the most perfect actress and real-life crush in the entire world--told Jon Stewart recently that her cover band's sound is "classic rock and some country. We do a little Hall & Oates, a little Springsteen, some Dolly Parton ..."

And some White Stripes, apparently. Though Alison Brie and the Girls is formally comprised of all women (d'uh), Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) joined the ladies on stage to perform "We're Going to Be Friends," a single from White Blood Cells.

In the past, Brie's costars like Danny Pudi and Donald Glover have made appearances, but this marks a nice expansion into a larger pop culture pantheon. May we suggest other fan favorites for surprise guests? Ryan Hansen, Ashley Benson and perhaps Damian Lewis on piano? That would be heaven.

Well now, Shell's getting it, too.

An "Arctic Ready" site of "Shell" is currently making the rounds on the Internet. It looks like it's by Shell, it's written in corporate rhetoric, and it has all of the features of a corporate attempt at social media (like a 'make your own postcard' section, and a game for kids).

Except, a closer look reveals something else: In the "game" for kids, you defend an oil rig from icebergs. On a page where "Shell" touts an arctic drilling platform, they explain:

On the slight chance that something does go wrong, Shell's spill cleanup plan is second to none. No one has yet fully determined how to clean up an oil spill in pack ice or broken ice—but that too is exactly the sort of challenge we love.

But best of all are the social media "postcards" that they created and that people are spreading around the web.

For example:

Or:

Or:

On a first look, they appear like something Shell put out, but an actual read would make you question if a company like Shell would have the gall to actually put out something like that.

Which gets you clicking. And so goes a canny awareness campaign like this. If successful activism takes more than just a message, now, these activists appear to most certainly have whatever that "extra something" is (which in this case, looks like astute and brilliant impersonation skills).

Check out what Shell's actual homepage looks like:

And the Arctic Ready homepage:

The real Shell site "help" page:

And the Arctic Ready "Shell" help page:

The entire thing is immaculately executed, and fairly hilarious, too. It's clearly some environmental group doing this, though the web registry only points to a privacy-proxy for a domain:

c/o ARCTICREADY.COM
P.O. Box 821650
Vancouver, WA 98682
US

Whoever it is, they're already fooling more than a few people, and are bound to upset the corporate PR brass at Shell. Something like this is bound to spread quickly, and fuel a little (misinformed) populist outrage along the way. So far, Shell's only issued this terse statement, hidden on their Alaska page:

Last week groups that oppose Shell’s plans in offshore Alaska posted a video that purports to show Shell employees at an event at the Seattle Space Needle. Shell did not host, nor participate in an event at the Space Needle and the video does not involve Shell or any of its employees. A fake press release claiming that Shell is considering legal action following the launch of the video was also distributed to the media. Most recently the group sponsored a contest on a website asking people to create fake advertisements which appear to be from Shell. The ads, and a contest to create more of the ads, are not associated with Shell. We continue to focus on a safe exploration season in 2012.

New York City has entire armies of so-called social media are marketing consultancies that likely can't yield results like this after years of trying everything in their playbooks. Maybe they could take a page from these guys', whoever they are.

UPDATE: It looks like it's the work of Greenpeace, in conjunction with activist group The Yes Men.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Youth, culture.

Though the Islamic Wing of the Met (or more specifically, the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia—say that three times fast) opened in October, there's no reason for young people not to fête the new galleries five months hence.

The event, dubbed “An Oasis at the Met,” was staged by the institution's College Group, to draw in students with a promise of respite from studies and the travails of college life. Unlike the college oases of binge drinking and raucous parties, students could enjoy the magnificent treasures of Arabia. (And isn't it better to OD on art rather than be hungover from cheap vodka?)

Onlookers spied from the balcony, which became an increasingly crammed fire hazard, while hundreds of undergrads milled about the Great Hall (though many were waiting in the serpentine coat check lines). The party attracted more than 3,000 guests.

Even for neophytes, uninterested in art, the visual delights of delicate folios, gigantic tapestries, mosaic alcoves and a room imported all the way from Damascus were arresting.

Despite the grandeur of the Great Hall and the glorious art, the guests of the event were far more fascinating and painfully entertaining. And from these most distinguished guests came a variety of reactions to the wing.

“What the hell, yo,” said a young woman to her companion as they looked at an Indian folio page. Needless to say, the discussion between party guests wasn't always high criticism.

If there is one thing that college girls like to do, it is to take pictures of themselves and others, preferably both in one shot. And by our informal count, more photos were taken at the 3 hour event than an entire day of Fashion Week.

Some party-goers were more artistically astute than others, of course. One young woman pointed to the floor of the Moroccan room to her friends, explaining the design, something she learned in an art history class.

Even if many of the guests were behaving as if the event was a cross between a party and a field-trip, they were still talking about the art. And isn't that what really matters?

After the ensemble Zikrayat played traditional Middle Eastern tunes, DJ Louie XIV hammed it up for the audience with generic club music. It was when The Observer heard Ke$ha echoing through the hall, that we knew it was our cue to leave. Young people these days.

A 'Downton Abbey' confession (downtonabbeyconfessions.tumblr.com)

Downton Abbey, the PBS British acquisition about lives and loves among the British ruling class, has inspired a smaller-scale but equally devoted following of, say, the Twilight series. The series's presence on Tumblr is far beyond that which its creators could have envisioned was possible for a lengthy period drama--to say nothing of its characters, for whom a typewriter is a terrifying novelty.

Downton Abbey Confessions features PostSecret-style confessions from frequent viewers, including "I honestly could not care LESS about Bates. What has he done to make him so amazing?" This site mysteriously stopped posting in November with its proprietor's own confession: "’m just very short on time lately. If people submit already completed confessions I’ll put them up straight away." Get Photoshopping, everyone!

The racily titled F*** Yes Downton Abbey features a variety of photos of the cast in real life and in period garb--a distracting juxtaposition, while Downton Abbey GIFs features, generally speaking, GIF moving-image files of the characters in motion. Sadly, the characters are not prone to outside movement, but a GIF file of a British man nodding his head or woman slightly widening her eyes are intriguing as documents of fandon.

Downton Abbeyoncé showcases scenes from the show that rhyme thematically with Beyoncé singles--it's certainly fortunate that the pop star of the moment has such a backlog of songs dealing with gender equity! Finally, and most esoterically, is The Lamps of Downton Abbey, a Tumblr showing off all the lamps on the series. For example: "Season two, episode seven.  Holy shit!  Check out the massive fringe on that lamp!" Fans of old-school illumination techniques, take note.

And yet, DowntonAbbey.tumblr.com is reserved and undeveloped.

Lady Gaga, performer or performance artist? (Getty Images)

The name of the exhibition says it all: “David Bowie, Artist.” The Museum of Arts and Design’s upcoming retrospective intends to demonstrate how Mr. Bowie’s work “has become the blueprint for contemporary artists working in performance.”

What does it mean for a contemporary recording artist to “work in performance”? Consider a star who has absorbed Mr. Bowie’s lessons in out-there dressing and adventurous music: Lady Gaga described her 2009 guest appearance on Gossip Girl as “like, a real coup d’état for me as a performance artist.” She’s merited praise from performance artist Marina Abramovic, who told a reporter, “I really appreciate her.” She’s earned criticism, too, from MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach, who reportedly informed Lady Gaga that she was not a performance artist, quoting Susan Sontag to tell the pop star, “All we have is our opinion.”

If you think Lady Gaga’s is an egregious use of the term, pay no attention to the actor James Franco, who referred to his gig on the soap opera General Hospital as performance art, explaining it in a Wall Street Journal piece that name-checked Ms. Abramovic and the self-flagellating Chris Burden.

Then there is Daphne Guinness. She may be no gallery artist, but on the eve of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual costume institute gala in May, in honor of the museum’s exhibition of late fashion designer Alexander McQueen, Barney’s asked the beer heiress to get dressed for the event in its windows. “[M]e as performance art!” Ms. Guinness crowed on Vogue.com. It raised the question: Was Ms. Guinness the art, or were the clothes by Mr. McQueen—who also transformed Lady Gaga from downtown princess to queen of the avant-garde in the “Bad Romance” music video—doing the performing?

Is this the true legacy of Mr. Bowie—the creep of the term “performance art” into the culture? The use of it to encompass any performance by a would-be artist? For what did Mr. Burden bleed while crucified to a Volkswagen in 1974 when Lady Gaga could claim his mantle with a dress made of steak at an MTV awards ceremony?

“I would think that Lady Gaga is performing art,” said Mr. Biesenbach, “and I think that Marina Abramovic is performance art. There’s a difference. If there’s a narrative, it’s performing art; if it’s an object, it’s performance art. It’s—to me—a clear distinction.” (The distinction gets muddier, though, considering that performance artists have taken to performing—Ms. Abramovic, for instance, is staging a musical on her life at this year’s Manchester International Festival.)

Mr. Biesenbach’s view is echoed by the artist Liz Magic Laser, who recently staged a performance piece in Times Square in which six actors chased one another on stairs to re-enact classic cinema. “They’re not performance artists,” said Ms. Magic Laser of Lady Gaga et al. “It doesn’t have to do with the intrinsic value of their performances—it’s all about context and target audience. A Lady Gaga concert … is not hailing the art world audience.” Lady Gaga’s success hardly rests on cornering the art crowd: she makes her money selling albums. “Lady Gaga is well equipped to enter the art world if she so chose—that requires aiming her performance at physical venues and social and theoretical conversations,” said Ms. Magic Laser.

But isn’t she doing so already? In 2009, Gaga performed at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, pounding away on a Damien Hirst-customized piano in a Frank Gehry-designed hat—the whole spectacle was coordinated by Francesco Vezzoli, an artist whose other work includes videos packed with celebrities. If Mr. Vezzoli is an artist, why isn’t his collaborator?

“I think performance art seems more desirable because what’s in a museum lasts for eternity, while performing art is very time-sensitive and might just be for a certain season,” said Mr. Biesenbach. Just by being featured at MoCA, Lady Gaga maybe got a little piece of the canon, something harder to achieve for a young artist than a hit single is for a singer. “I don’t know if Lady Gaga is eternal, but when a museum acquires something and shows it, it’s meant to be truth and beauty, but forever.”

MoMA made headlines in 2009 when it acquired its first piece of live performance art, Tino Sehgal’s Kiss (2003). Then there was last year’s blockbuster MoMA show “The Artist Is Present,” during which Ms. Abramovic sat motionless, staring at one attendee at a time. Attendees included Marisa Tomei, Sex and the City’s Kim Cattrall and, naturally, Mr. Franco. “It was kind of the talk of the town or talk of the country; even when I traveled people mentioned it,” said Mr. Biesenbach. “It definitely made it more mainstream. Because nobody questioned it being at MoMA. It’s a change of the discourse.”

Asked about performance art versus other types of performing, RoseLee Goldberg, founder of the Performa biennial, told The Observer, “To be an artist is to be isolated, to work in a way which is original and highly experimental. The artist rarely knows where he or she is going, until he/she gets there.”

But consider Lady Gaga’s costumes. If they are not art, they are … something apart from the typical pop-star uniform. “When you observe her costumes,” said Leslie Tonkonow, the gallerist who works with artists like Laurel Nakadate, “there’s definitely an influence of actual history, even going back to the beginning of the 20th century. She’s definitely aware of the history of performance art—she’s influenced by it and incorporating it into her act.” Ms. Tonkonow cited the mid-1970s work of Pat Oleszko, whose costume of dozens of inflatable, red-nippled breasts Lady Gaga reappropriated as a custom-made body suit for a recent Harper’s Bazaar fashion spread. (Other examples might include the work of Carolee Schneemann, whose Meat Joy presaged that meat dress by decades.) That said, “I wouldn’t necessarily consider her a performance artist,” indicated Ms. Tonkonow, “but she definitely incorporates performance as an art form.”

Andrey Bartenev, a Russian performance artist whose outsize costumes look somewhat Gagavian, told The Observer that performance art is based upon “new visual ideas, new technology, new composition—everything new. It makes everything fresh, and that freshness made it interesting to pop culture. Pop culture wants to make everything fresh and promote happy future.” Those who prefer performances of “Born This Way” to performance art and thus don’t catch the Carolee Schneemann-esque dog-whistle in Lady Gaga’s meat dress can still appreciate it as a groundbreaking installation, if not art. “She’s great as an example of how crazy people should use ideas from other crazy people,” said Mr. Bartenev.

Fair enough. But is she a performance artist? “Performance art has destroyed the gap between the stage and the audience,” said Mr. Bartenev.

It is perhaps not so far-fetched to suggest that these days we might all at one point or another think of ourselves as performance artists. “We live in a time where everyone is updating the weather on your iPhone, your life on Facebook,” said Mr. Biesenbach. “I think it just makes it clear that things are in a constant flow, and performance art, the most amazing thing with Marina sitting in the atrium, it was constant updating. It was a clear expression of time, which seems kind of the golden trend of our time.”

Ms. Goldberg takes a less optimistic view of the use and abuse of the term “performance art” by popular media. “The term catches on and the media tends to use it for everything that is over the top or unconventional. A politician cries in public and the media declares—oh, that’s performance art! It has become part of everyday terminology.”

Performance art’s newfound ubiquity in the culture may generate more real performance art, as well as much performance art of the ersatz variety. Of Ms. Abramovic’s recent show, Mr. Biesenbach said, “I think it’ll have an impact on the following generations, right? I see many artists that were playing with sculpture and photography—they really allow themselves to do a piece that’s not object-related. When I saw Terence Koh at Mary Boone, I thought like, this is really a liberation, thanks to Marina, that a great artist is doing a show at a great gallery without even producing an object.” Mr. Koh appeared with Lady Gaga in a 2010 performance, entitled GAGAKOH!, at a Japanese club.

Mr. Biesenbach seems to prefer discussing the gallery art, and he’s not alone. The gap between artist and audience, if dented, remains intact. But is the work of past artists diminished by the latest would-be practitioners of the form? Of references to performance art made by popular performers like Lady Gaga, Ms. Goldberg told The Observer: “It’s a reference and an inspiration for sure. It’s essentially popularizing work that is made in a very different context.”

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Because of the lenses, they aren't merely images. They're singular, fully formed views. Window (View of the Gowanus Heights #2), the only piece not set in a field, has us looking out through an apartment window, but it isn't a doubling-it's an opposition. There's no question of choosing what we're interested in looking at. What interests us is the dandelions, mushrooms and fairy rings that crowd up to the glass. (A fairy ring is a circle of darker grass formed by mushrooms spreading underground, or a gateway by which fairies can enter or leave our world.)

In Fairy Ring (with Dandelions), Fairy Ring with White Clover and Fairy Ring with English Daisies, a single inviting ring lies directly in the center. The rings in Three Fairy Rings (in Monochrome), alone in the back room, retreat across a dark gray landscape like craters on the moon. And in Small Fairy Ring Mushroom Cluster, Small Fairy Ring with Mushrooms and Dandelion Cluster, the usually inconspicuous fungus and weed proudly pose for us. The mushrooms look like family portraits-in each case there are two tall and two short-but the yellow dandelions, leaning out tightly from an older white chieftain in the middle, are like a posse of young blades on their way out to a fight.

If you lean down close to them, the lens will distort the scene so that you're looking at it underwater. If you stand up again, you can almost see one of the flowers, frozen in the moment, reaching up to smooth his hair. If you take a few steps back, plants and sky mesh into a static nature scene. From across the gallery, the bright circle leaps out from the wall, like a globular teardrop in space, or a view of heaven, impossible to enter or touch.

People who don't believe in fairies think they're romantic, but people who do believe try not to mention them by name. In fact, Mr. Jacobs is not a photographer. In a tour de force of what you might call insider outsider art-the technically brilliant execution of a strange, obsessive idea-he's constructed detailed dioramas out of plastic, wood and hair. Through a window behind the back room, you can see the box housing one such diorama sitting on two-by-four struts. Fluorescent bulbs illuminate a paper sky through a plastic clamshell roof. For the past 500 years or so, we've been trying to make two dimensions into three, but now, it seems, it's time to try the other way around. It's hard to tell whether you're looking at these fairy rings or into them.

At Paula Cooper, Beatrice Caracciolo's "Cercare nella Terra" ("Searching the Earth") begins with eight gorgeous photogravures of Mediterranean fields and trees. Lush and heavy and dry, so lucid that they have no gray but only tones of black, they look like assemblages of woolly shadow. From a high, respectful distance we see the different stripes of different furrowed fields, or a single field with lines of growing plants receding like hand-spun yarn, or a field of white sunflowers under a broad gray sky. Untitled (Tree) (the rest of the pieces are simply Untitled), a regal, old-fashioned, full-length portrait of an enormous oak appears both as a small photogravure and as a six-and-a-half-foot-tall inkjet print.

Accompanying and inspired by the photos are a dozen etchings in which, with a thoughtful, hesitating, repetitive line, Ms. Caracciolo diagrams the skeletons of her Mediterranean fields by building shapes out of intersections and fragments. The etchings and photos are like reversals of each other. In the photos, empty space is black, and in the etchings, white. In the photos, mass is stronger than line, and nature is slightly blurred, as if it's nighttime during the day. The white sunflowers look like a contamination of the plate, and the oak like a Rorschach blot. But the etchings are nothing but edges and wire, outlines that seem to have body only because, like lightning, they move more quickly than we can see.

editorial@observer.com

The last time we saw a musical act so committed to meddling in its very good music with stagecraft and stunts, it was -- well, Cee-Lo's old musical duo, Gnarls Barkley, which donned Star Wars outfits to sing "Crazy." He's apparently learned that if you want a song to get attention, you have to be committed to making it more of a spectacle each time you sing it. Everyone gains something in this performance: Gwyneth (who performed the song previously on Glee) has a burgeoning musical career to promote, and the Muppets have to start creating buzz for their forthcoming movie (nothing is exempt from tawdry business demands -- not even Jim Henson's creatures!). And Cee-Lo gets to cement his place as the ringleader of a zany musical circus. The loser may be the audience member who wonders why a song they like, by Cee-Lo, has to become a super-adulterated multimedia spectacular, featuring an Oscar-winner and Kermit. Isn't shooting a music video enough?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Walpurgisnacht Ballet is one of Balanchine's lesser efforts, created in 1980 as a late vehicle for Suzanne Farrell. She managed to make it thrilling--if you were going in for wild abandon à la Faust, Farrell was your girl. Wendy Whelan is not your girl. She has many virtues, but wild abandon is not one of them. As always, she works hard to meet Balanchine's demands, but she's stymied here by her temperament. Not even Farrell, though, could have expressed wild abandon opposite Charles Askegard. He remains a first-rate partner, and this is a role that needs first-rate partnering, but he's grown so stiff and creaky that you feel sorry for him for actually having to move.

This minor piece was followed, after a short pause, by Mr. B's lovely Duo Concertant, choreographed on Peter Martins and Kay Mazzo for the Stravinsky Festival of 1972. Up on the stage are the two principals and the "Duo" itself--the piano and the violin. The dancers listen, join in, go from joyous participation to haunting comings and going in the dark. Duo suited Martins' grave playfulness (yes, I know that may sound contradictory) and Mazzo's cameo beauty. Sterling Hyltin and Robert Fairchild were more frisky than playful, and the whole thing didn't add up. So ended the first half of the night's proceedings.

After the intermission came another small-scale work, Valse-Fantaisie (principal couple and four girls)--charming, short, pleasingly danced by Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette and decidedly lightweight. Then at last a masterpiece, The Four Temperaments. It doesn't usually work best as a closer, but here it was rain on parched earth.

The three "themes" were underwhelmingly danced; these are profound roles, but they hadn't been thought through, as if no one involved thought they really mattered. Of the principals, only Jennie Somogyi danced with the essential Balanchine intensity and expressivity--her phrasing, the way she so easily reveals meaning with every step and gesture, are almost unique at City Ballet now-a throwback to the great days. Teresa Reichlen, that large, impressive creature with her faultless technique, reveals nothing, at least to me. Her "Choleric" is scary-looking, but it isn't truly fierce. About Sébastian Marcovici's "Melancholic," we can gratefully say that he has recently slimmed down. As for Ask la Cour's "Phlegmatic," it's only fair to acknowledge that he's no more clueless than most of the other guys who've wrestled with it in recent years.

Four ballets up, four ballets down. Starvation diet, but an early night for the orchestra--and the commuters.

A later program was far more satisfactory--and then far more discouraging. The large satisfactions came from flawless performances of two of the very rare worthwhile new ballets of the past 10 years, Christopher Wheeldon's Polyphonia and Alexei Ratmansky's Concerto DSCH.

The first, set to bracing piano music by Ligeti, is for four couples, and it drops in on Agon, Episodes and The Four T's, in affectionate homage, not as pastiche or plagiarism. Here, ironically, Wheeldon is at his most original and unlabored--unstintingly inventive. And perfectly served by his dancers: Somogyi and Maria Kowroski, unsurprisingly, but also two of the most exciting of the new girls, Brittany Pollack and Lauren Lovette, who was hypnotizing in a long, slow solo. Polyphonia and Morphoses were Wheeldon's breakthrough ballets. We're still hoping that he'll rise to that level of achievement again.

The Ratmansky, only a couple of years old, is beginning to look like a classic. It's so cleverly constructed: the romantic lead couple (Whelan at her best with her excellent partner, Tyler Angle) in contrast to the bouncy trio of Bouder, Veyette and Joaquin de Luz. The central duet, to Shostakovich's ravishingly melodious adagio movement, is ingenious as well as luminous. And best of all, perhaps, the endlessly various and beautiful material for the six demi-soloists who provide background (and sometimes foreground) for the leads. Ratmansky's marked talent for group movement keeps drawing your eye from the duet--until Whelan and Angle pull you back.

So far, so good.

And then a dizzying descent. A work by Susan Stroman, billed as a world premiere and called For the Love of Duke (that's Duke Ellington, plus Billy Strayhorn), turned out to be only half a world premiere. We first saw its second section a dozen years ago, under the title Blossom Got Kissed, a cute and harmless throwaway, memorable only because it was the ballet that showed us that Kowroski could be funny as well as gorgeous. But compared to the new section, called Frankie and Johnny... and Rose, it looks like The Sleeping Beauty. (The City Ballet program chooses not to indicate the original date of Blossom Got Kissed. Do they think we've all forgotten?)

In the long run it doesn't matter that For the Love of Duke isn't really a world premiere; what matters is that Frankie and Johnny is so drearily vapid and clichéd. The Dave Berger Jazz Orchestra is up on the stage. In front of it is a bench. There's a guy with a wandering eye--Johnny. There's a pair of silly rival girls jockeying for his favor--Frankie and Rose. As his attention drifts, he pushes first one, then the other off the bench, and they disappear behind it. (Hilarity.) Everything else is generic hoofing, except for those steps Stroman has snatched from Who Cares? Balanchine made a brilliant ballet out of show-business music. Stroman, without a clue about ballet choreography, has concepts instead of steps--I'm still reeling from her pretentious and empty hit Contact.

The hero, if that's what he is, was danced by Amar Ramasar, an appealing dancer but by no means a strong enough presence to carry off this bit of nothing. The girls are Tiler Peck and Sarah Mearns, both terrific dancers who here define the word "wasted." And speaking of waste, why waste more words on this fiasco? The best thing I can say about it is that it would have fit right in with the worst of the seven premieres of last year's spring season. Susan Stroman has a billion Broadway hits behind her, and hats off! But please--let's keep her away from the City Ballet stage.

editorial@observer.com

And that's where it gets creepy.

While Will (Tom Sturridge) and Emma (Rachel Bilson) were indeed grade-school buddies, it soon becomes clear, as Will reunites with his older brother, Jim (Scott Mechlowicz), and friends Joe and Dolores (Nelson Franklin and Nikki Blonsky), that the two are not dating, and in fact have not spoken or seen each other in more than a dozen years, when Will and Jim's parents were killed in a train wreck and the boys had to move away. Emma is back in town to help care for her sick father (Richard Jenkins), and Will has followed her there. In fact, he follows her everywhere--a fact the makers of this film seem to find heartwarming. He's smitten! It's true love! No, it's obsessive stalking paired with what looks to be a fairly severe personality disorder. Did I also mention that he's a mime? And habitually speaks out loud to his dead parents? In any place other than Hollywood, this love story would be grounds for a restraining order.

But Emma, who is dealing with a faltering acting career and a recent breakup in addition to her father's imminent death, needs a little break from reality, which Will, stuck as he is in a disturbing Peter Pan stage of mental and emotional development, is tailor-made to provide. After finally summoning the nerve to approach her (by jumping out of her childhood tree house, naturally), Will convinces Emma to spend the afternoon with him. He takes her to the site of an old soda shop they used to spend time in--now a dive bar--and insists upon sitting on what he calls "their stools," dislodging customers even though there are other empty seats available. Red flag No. 1. Then, they decamp to a playground, where he recalls in frightening detail mundane moments they shared as children. Red flag No. 2. By the time Emma realizes that something might be wrong with her playful, pajama-clad paramour, there are so many red flags she might as well be at a communist rally.

I'm not sure what went wrong with this picture. It could just be bad judgment on the part of screenwriter Steve Adams, who for all we know finds stalking adorable, or who thought that perhaps if Will had a sad enough back story, his disturbing obsession could be forgiven (he is clearly intended to be sweet and harmless, but something gets lost in translation). I don't think the blame falls on Mr. Sturridge, who, with his squinty eyes, chiseled cheekbones and pillowy mouth, is about as cute as one can get when playing what amounts to a deranged clown. He does have some affectations--especially his soft, nervous movements (which are meant to be Chaplin-esque but read as mildly autistic) and lusty, blank stares--that contribute to Will's naïve menace, but in the body of another actor, who knows? Will might have been even scarier.

There are, thankfully, a few side plots that give Mr. Sturridge's endless antics a rest. Blythe Danner nearly steals the movie (I wish) as Emma's mother, upended by worry and premature grief, and Richard Jenkins is reliably subtle and superb as the gruff, ailing patriarch. We're also treated to a brief, ridiculous twist in which Emma's ex-boyfriend, Aaron (Matthew Davis), arrives in town and manages to get Will arrested for murder. Sadly, he doesn't stay behind bars for long, and once he's released, Emma forgives him. I suppose we can't blame her--he may be a stalker, but at least he hasn't killed anyone, which is more than you can say for a lot of the people on eHarmony. Or so I've heard.

ulamarche@observer.com

Waiting For Forever
Running time 94 minutes
Written by Steve Adams
Directed by James Keach
Starring Rachel Blison, Tom Sturridge, Blythe Danner, Richard Jenkins
1.5/4

x

On the heels of Rabbit Hole and Blue Valentine comes another winter downer, perfect for those looking to exacerbate their seasonal affective disorders. In The Other Woman, Portman stars as Emilia, a young woman who lives a financially (if not emotionally) charmed life on the Upper West Side with her husband, Jack (Scott Cohen), and his 8-year-old son from his first marriage, William (Charlie Tahan, a gifted child actor who last appeared in Charlie St. Cloud). When Emilia picks William up from school, the other mothers whisper and stare, and we soon learn there are two reasons for this: Not only did Emilia, a former associate at Jack's law firm, seduce him away from his ex-wife, Carolyn (Lisa Kudrow), but she and Jack have also recently lost their 3-day-old daughter to SIDS.

The loss of her newborn, understandably, eclipses all other problems for Emilia (a more fitting title for the film would be The Dead Baby, but I somehow doubt that would drum up ticket sales). Two months later, she is devastated and vulnerable, her hair unkempt, her face wan. She forgets to button her coat against the winter chill; hurries past strollers in Central Park; and snaps at William, Jack and anyone else who gets close enough. Through flashbacks, we learn that her marriage is still new--Emilia was already a few months pregnant when Jack left Carolyn--and that she hasn't fully adjusted to life as a stepmom, let alone a grieving one. William is a good kid, but can be guarded and unintentionally cruel (he breezily informs Emilia that her daughter was never really a person--something he heard from his mother--and suggests that they sell off the baby's unused furniture on eBay), and Emilia retaliates with small acts of negligence, encouraging him to eat an ice-cream sundae even though he's lactose intolerant and taking him ice-skating without a helmet. Carolyn, meanwhile, is still so angry and hurt that she tries to legally prevent Emilia from being William's guardian (Lisa Kudrow, so nuanced and wonderful in Mr. Roos' The Opposite of Sex, has little to do here but spit venom in every scene she appears in).

The Other Woman has brief moments of levity and charm (mainly in the scenes between Ms. Portman and Mr. Tahan, who have a sweet chemistry), but mostly it's depressing, and not just because of the dead baby elephant in the room. Every character is racked with some kind of grief or guilt: Emilia's co-worker Mindy (Lauren Ambrose) struggles with infertility, and her parents (Debra Monk and Michael Cristofer) are working on rekindling their relationship after infidelities caused by her father's sex addiction. The only character who isn't sad most of the time is Anthony Rapp, who enjoys about three minutes of total screen time as Simon, another co-worker who serves mainly to listen sympathetically to Emilia's travails (the Rent checks must have slowed down). There's nothing wrong with depressing movies, but don't go into the theater expecting anything resembling a comedy--SIDS has a way of dampening the mood.

Or, on second thought, maybe depressing isn't the word. Maybe it's unsettling. It's unsettling to watch Emilia suffer through her nightmare of a life because sometimes it's hard to feel bad for her. She makes a shameless play for Jack knowing full well he's married, even showing up to a company party at his apartment wearing a tiny, strapless dress and an expression of entitlement, as if there is no reason in the world that his perfect house--and family--shouldn't be hers. At the rehearsal dinner for their wedding, she dismisses Mindy, who has recently miscarried, with an insincere "This'll be you before you know it!" and makes out with her soon-to-be husband, seemingly without a care in the world (certainly not for his jilted wife and lonely son). Carolyn may be portrayed as a one-dimensional harpy, but Emilia's no saint. Surely she didn't deserve what happened, but you get the uneasy sense that she had something coming to her.

While it's hard not to get swept up in the heartbreaking drama, especially with such a solid, complex performance by Ms. Portman, some scenes ring false. A "remembrance walk" for pregnancy and infant losses near the end of the film serves as a catalyst for a blow-up between Emilia and her father that seems kind of beside the point (now, on top of everything, we have to worry about her daddy issues?). There's an olive branch extended to Emilia from Carolyn that seems too quick and tidy given the latter's overwhelming vitriol. And the baby's death--which has already permeated every scene in the movie--is drawn out again in horrible detail toward the end, complete with a flashback (a scene that is not unrelated to the plot but which nonetheless feels like overkill).

Mr. Roos has a gift for writing affecting, complicated narratives, but The Other Woman is certainly his most tortured work yet, a complete 180 from the saccharine Marley & Me (not that that's necessarily a bad thing). It's the kind of movie you will never want to see again, but that sticks with you after the lights come up and you're released back onto the street, into a world that suddenly seems slightly more bearable.

ulamarche@observer.com

THE OTHER WOMAN
Running time 102 minutes
Written and directed by Don Roos
Starring Natalie Portman, Scott Cohen, Lisa Kudrow, Charlie Tahan
2.5/4