Frownland
Director: Ronald Bronstein
Year Released: 2007
Rating: 2.0
A jittery, slump-shouldered New Yorker (Dore Mann) - who works a scam job going door to door selling coupon books - shows great difficulty getting his true feelings across via verbal communication: he spits up all over the camera director Bronstein has shoved in his face at all times and has snot running out of his nose while he stammers and claws at his own face. I'm going to guess that the intended effect is to make the audience at once laugh at him and cringe, though I found myself more irritated by the picture's belabored, simplistic caricature of social dysfunction/discomfort. It's only when Bronstein finally shifts his attention to Mann's musically-inclined roommate's difficulties finding a job - and, in particular, a very awkward conversation with a hostile man he meets trying to get a position as an LSAT instructor (?) - that the picture shuffles closer to a truer sense of (less sensational) alienation.
