Short Cuts (1993)

Right, let’s see if I can remember: Andie MacDowell and TV personality Bruce Davison are married with a son. One day he gets knocked over by Lily Tomlin, a waitress married to limo driver Tom Waits. Her daughter, Lili Taylor, is married to make-up artist Robert Downey Jr and they are friends with sex-caller Janet Jason Leigh and her pool-cleaning husband, Chris Penn, who cleans MacDowell and Davison’s pool and lusts after their young neighbour, cello player Lori Singer, who is the daughter of Annie Ross, a jazz singer who Waits often goes to watch. Meanwhile, MacDowell and Davison are visited by Davison’s father, Jack Lemmon, in the hospital where the doctor who treats their son is Matthew Modine, married to artist Julianne Moore, whose sister Madeleine Stowe is married to biker cop, Tim Robbins, who is having an affair with Frances McDormand (whose ex-husband is pilot Peter Gallagher) but also hits on Anne Archer, a clown married to Fred West who has discovered a dead body on a fishing trip with friends. Archer and West go for dinner with Modine and Moore, whilst MacDowell and Davison are bombarded with sinister calls from the baker, Lyle Lovett.

I may easily have missed something out, and these intertwined narratives don’t begin to tell you how complex the various lives included can be. The interactions between different stories isn’t as important as the intimate dramas played between each pairing (it’s usually a couple), with each story revealing a different insecurity or frustration that exists within suburban American life.

Robert Altman made all kinds of films but showed a definite skill with ensemble casts, with the big names involved here suggesting the quality of his work and the high regard he is held in even in Hollywood, where he existed on the peripheries for many years. It is a mixed cast but the performances are equally brilliant, even from those musicians who have no real acting experience (apart from perhaps Lyle Lovett, who looks quite shocked to find himself in front of a camera). Perhaps most remarkable are the performances from the various children, who support the drama by adding to the familial atmosphere of each minor tragedy.

It’s certainly not a cheerful film but it is a powerful work with a collection of fine performances, great, subtle writing and excellent direction. It takes us into an unsettling world where nothing is too wrong, but nothing is too right either. Infidelity, murder, selfishness and an unwillingness to communicate and understand one another – it might be high drama but at times it’s rather familiar too.