Misadventures of Margaret [DVD] [1999]

Were it not for Parker Posey, I'd give this film one star. She alone makes it worth the watch, although even then it's a mostly painful experience.

The main problem is the story; not only its content, but its TONE. Posey is a wallflower of an author living among sophisticated New Yorkers. She and her college professor husband (Jeremy Notham) are suffering a "seven year itch." Posey feels like she's "missing something." So she has silly fantasies about adultery, and about lesbianism (with Brooke Shields), and about naked men, and a French man, and her dentist, and other occassional diversions.

That's mostly all they are. Silly, diverting fantasies involving thinly drawn "characters."

Shields is a very slight character. I didn't believe she was a lesbian, or really anything. That's because her "character" feels as though she has no inner life. Most of the "characters" feel similarly empty. (There's the obligatory "neurotic gay friend.") Their remarks are meant to be witty and pithy, but they all feel vapid and lacking substance. Like there's nobody inside those shell of a bodies.

Even Posey feels emptier than in her usually excellent work. She and Northan do manage to conjure up some real chemistry and poignancy in the final 5 or 10 minutes, which comes as a surprise in this otherwise vacuous film. So I'm elevating this film from 1 to 2 stars. But overall this film is dull.

Some other problems: this DVD is FULL SCREEN. I thought that maybe this was a TV movie (it feels too slight and vapid even for that), yet there are shots of men's buttocks, and Posey's breasts, so perhaps it was a made-for-HBO (or whatever) movie. Or maybe it was indeed shot wide screen, in which case shame on this DVD making an already bad film worse.

Additionally, this DVD has NO MENU, and NO SPECIAL FEATURES, and NO SCENE SELECT. You pop in the DVD, it goes straight to some trailers and promos (which you must fast forward through), then straight to the film, and then it ends and that's it.

One of Posey's worst films. For her better work, see such brilliant films as HOUSE OF YES (black comedy), CLOCKWATCHERS (office comedy), HENRY FOOL (Hal Hartley's best work), or the under-rated Christmas family film DINNER AT FRED'S (proof that Posey can handle Meg Ryan type romantic comedy roles).

But MISADVENTURES OF MARGARET is just a dull dud, and on a poorly produced DVD.

A timid, insecure popular author (Parker Posey) with an overly-attentive professor husband (Jeremy Northam) decide to write an erotic novel. With encouragement from her sister (Elizabeth McGovern) and a bi-sexual friend (Brooke Shields), she goes to France with the intent of doing research at an inn where a diary she had been using documented erotic encounters. Instead she finds the inn is now a cloister for singing nuns. However, a young, divorced sound engineer (Patrick Bruel) is also there taping the nuns. While attracted, she mostly succumbs only to new fantasies until he follows her home to New York.