Afternoon Delight (2013)

Spoiled rich people bored with their lives go looking for something to spice up their mundane lives.

Dialogue like "I know I shouldn't complain there are women getting raped in Darfour 1, 2, 3X a day" - not funny!. Message to women is- stick to your boring life no matter how unhappy you are because it could be worse. Something out of the 50's and 60's. Bored housewives. Cheating husbands. Prostitutes who are happy in their jobs and in their lives not very realistic

I thought we had progressed beyond this point

Not very evolved.

Fmovies: This is not a declaration of the paucity of American cinema, it's a fascinatingly observed study of our modern dilemmas - we have all the things that consumerist culture provides but not the things we need - a sense of meaning / intimacy / vitality. And while this comes with the movie its not the aim it sets out to highlight - to draw that conclusion is to plump for the obvious - within this framework is a fine fine director's eye - astute, understated, and then edited beautifully - in such a way as to catch all the subtleties of each little heavily laden moment, but managing to keep it ticking along at just the right pace and rhythm so that a film that invites, rather than grabbing you at the outset, gradually grows and grows through the teasing character development, the keen directorial eye and superb acting, until you are distinctly hooked. It manages to tell it's story and to reflect common themes of all our lives at the same time, and while the final resolution carries no great surprises, the skillful scripting manages to take the viewer with it right to this ending conclusion. Fine direction, excellent acting (thank you guys) and a likability that grows and grows...admirably. Watch this and let it do it's thing, leave your cynicism in the lobby and you will be well entertained.

'Afternoon Delight' pretends to push the envelope, but it's just another lightweight Indie comedy-drama with a fickle plot. The story relates how a frustrated LA housewife called Rachel visits a strip club with her husband in order to revive their sexually comatose marriage. A lap dance from a stripper somehow provokes Rachel to hire the girl as a live-in nanny for her young son. This foolish decision is clearly driven by latent desire for the dancer, but the film doesn't develop the idea with any serious intent.

The stripper turns out to be a decent nanny, but the new domestic arrangement leads to some awkward situations. After Rachel chooses to accompany her stripper/nanny on a call-girl appointment, she becomes hostile to the girl and the dynamic changes. The script choices remain consistently capricious throughout, exemplified by the meltdown of Rachel's therapist, who suddenly confides her lesbian relationship has broken up, and starts weeping about it during a session - and once again there is no follow-up. Eventually Rachel and her husband get down to business in the bedroom without needing to address any of their problems - so there's that.

Afternoon Delight fmovies. I've previously been a big fan of the director's work, The United States of Tara and Six Feet Under especially, but this is a tiresome piece which doesn't really go anywhere. Or anywhere interesting, at least.

Bored housewife Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) seems to be trudging through every day life without taking much pleasure in it until she meets a stripper with a heart of gold (or so it seems at first) and invites her in to her home. After discovering that said stripper is also a sex worker she becomes more obsessed with her, until, inevitably, events take a darker turn.

The first half hour of the movie is fairly amusing and well written, albeit with thinly sketched characters that it's hard to care about. But after that the film is painfully self-indulgent, predictable, and transforms in to a tedious mumblecore flick where we're supposed to care for the central leads despite them having no depth at all. An incredibly over long and agonisingly dull party scene seems to go on forever and from that point on everything is hit home with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, until the film eventually ends and you'll wonder why it couldn't all have been summed up within 45 minutes.

Centering around the idea that "You don't appreciate what you've got until you've lost it", it could be of interest if it wasn't for the badly drawn characters and frustratingly predictable plot developments, that ultimately lead to an ending you'll have seen coming a mile off. It's a real shame as the first thirty minutes show promise, but it truly fails to deliver on it.

Making a film is hard, no one disputes that, and I have respect for the filmmaker for making this film. But if this is the best direction of American independent film of 2013 then the answer is simple, cinema is dead. The fact that this film has played almost nowhere in Europe (festival wise) shows the impact it has internationally and the limited view that somewhere like Sundance can have on the current state of cinema. I don't have any ill will towards Ms. Solowayl or her film, but cinema should be there to enlighten, excite, experiment, not play into clichés and formulas (in this case, the indie that really wants to be the next multiplex family train wreck). This film isn't terrible, it's just average, another movie, with some "names," used as a calling card to go on and help Ms. Soloway make more mediocre work. And as the protagonist says in the TV SET, "make the world more mediocre." Hopefully, before her next attempt, she'll actually watch some films (and learn about cinema), think about what she wants to say and try and do something as an artist that is, even mildly, important. And of course "important" is relative, but if this was the last film she could make, would this be the story she would want to tell? Really? If the answer is yes, then not only is cinema dead, but culture as well. In the days of TED talks, Starbucks alternative mix CDs, etc.. this fits in just fine. Something you think is radical, but when you really look at it critically, it's just more suburban POV, that has nothing more to say than, "our life is boring." We know that already. I give her a five, if nothing more, for effort.

Afternoon Delight plays a bit like a Judd Apatow flick, from a female perspective. It's enjoyable, unexpectedly; after the first scene I sighed deeply expecting another film about about L.A. upper middle class problems. The film turned into something much more poignant.

Despite some automated plot clichés, the film plays earnestly and honestly, following a married couple as they struggle to keep the fire going in their relationship - not a plot I would have driven a mile to watch unfold. However the film is (mercifully) very funny, with a good eye for improv and dialogue, and it aims for the heart. For the most part it's on target - and it tackles some complicated grey-area issues that we all face in relationships.

Kathryn Hahn I'd seen (and hardly noticed) in Our Idiot Brother, but here she delivers an effective, multi dimensional performance.

A strong film, made better by the fact that I kind of stumbled upon it without previous expectations.