Director: Andrew Bujalski
Much like his masterpiece Computer Chess, Andrew Bujalski’s Results at first seems formless and meandering, as if trying to discover the point of it all as it’s progressing. In the end, it’s evidently a modern response to the comedy of remarriage, and the deliberation with which the pieces have been aligned becomes clear. Such is the genius of Bujalski, who as a writer is capable of creating stories that feel organic even within a highly calibrated form. As a visual stylist, he shoots much of Results in long and medium shots–the close-ups, which so prevail in contemporary romantic comedies, are held for private moments, suggesting the interiority of an individual rather than trying to force a connection between two characters. When a night of drunken, stoned debauchery escalates into a surprising plot development, it feels spontaneous and true. Had it been cut in a style to manufacture a sense of sexual tension, it would have fallen apart entirely. Letting moments like those play out in the frame makes Bujalski an excellent actor’s director, and in this instance he’s assembled an impressive cast of underappreciated talents. Guy Pearce wisely doesn’t cheapen his character’s self-help ethos by underlining his hypocrisies (he’s more vulnerable than he may let on, but he’s not a fraud), and Kevin Corrigan plays his depressed loner with just the right amount of wit and amusement.
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