Marvin Landisman (Wuhl) was once a “promising,” young writer/director. Now, he’s a fortyish, L.A. hack who directs instructional cooking videos for a living. His wife (Metcalf) is back in New York trying to reassemble their lives by opening a restaurant of her own and scouting out a teaching job for him at Queens College. As the movie opens, Marvin is home alone watching a 16mm print of Jean Renoir’s immortal Grand Illusion starring that legendary “difficult” director, Erich von Stroheim. Then the phone rings. On the other end is Jack Roth (Landau), a down-and-out movie producer who used to be “somebody” in Hollywood but now is just another guy hooked on the business and needing to score. He’s unearthed one of Marvin’s old scripts, says he has the “money men” lined up, assents to Marvin’s demands to direct and — they’re off and running. Bit by bit, meeting by meeting, compromise by compromise, Marvin sees his original script (about a painter who commits suicide in defense of his artistic integrity) wither into unrecognizable pulp. The reason movies exist, Marvin comes to realize, is that every “money guy” has a mistress looking for her big acting break and, therefore, making movies is just a persuasive way of making whoopee. But, like the great Jean Renoir once explained, “everybody has their reasons” and Marvin certainly has his ulterior motives for making this movie. Mistress is a very amusing movie with searing portraits and observations that, were it not for the overall brilliance of The Player only a few months ago, would be the “insiders” movie of the year. Instead of going for all-out humor and laughs, Mistress maintains a more cynical edge like a droll New Yorker navigating its way through the sunny sinkholes of L.A. It comes as no surprise then, that this is a genuinely New York project. It represents the first independent production of Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca FIlms, a company only a few years old and created to nurture independent film work. In his debut as a feature film director, Primus (also co-writer and longtime actor) shows promise. The performances are all strong (particularly Landau’s) but, as a whole, the movie suffers from competing impulses that push and pull Mistress from comedy to drama and back again. It can’t quite seem to make up its mind and as a consequence loses a lot of its steam and momentum. One gets the feeling that, at heart, there’s a terrific farce buried somewhere in all this cynical Sturm und Drang just bursting to get out. There are moments, for sure, but someone always puts the lid back on.
This article appears in November 20 • 1992 (Cover).
