The Anniversary Party

The Anniversary Party

Photo above: Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming co-directed this movie at Cannes in 2001 named “The Anniversary Party” (Photo by Roger Ebert).

Produced by Fine Line Features. A Film By Jennifer Jason Leigh And Alan Cumming. Running Time: 115 Minutes. Rated R (For Language, Drug Use And Nudity).

“The Anniversary Party” chronicles a single night among a group of show-business friends actors, directors, photographers, agents and a couple of neighbors who are drawn into the maelstrom.

Joe and Sally Therrian (Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh) are getting back together, he a writer-director, she an actress who hears time’s winged chariot drawing near. It is their sixth anniversary; they have been apart for most of the past year; his infidelity, bisexual experimentation and drug use have all figured in the equation; he has declined to cast her in a role obviously based on herself because he believes she is too old for such parts now that she is pushing 40-something.

(This puts me in mind of Margaret Cho’s documentary “I’m the One That I Want,” where she recalls the CBS sitcom producer who told her she was too fat to play herself, and should be a little less Chinese-y.) This is not an original idea for a movie. I can think of half a dozen films about all-night parties where painful truths are revealed. What gives “The Anniversary Party” its edge is how close it comes to reality how much we’re invited to see some of the characters as being like or unlike the people playing them. Cumming knows something about sexual ambiguity; Leigh really is in her 30s (though unlike Sally at this stage of her career), etc.

Kevin Kline plays an actor who’s no longer anyone’s first choice to play romantic leading men opposite young actresses. Phoebe Cates, his real-life wife, plays a former actress who retired to be a mother and wife. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the rising young star who gets multimillion dollar paydays and has been cast in Joe’s latest picture.

Other performers play familiar types. Jennifer Beals is an earthy photographer who once slept with Joe. John Benjamin Hickey is the couple’s business manager, and Parker Posey is his motormouth wife. Michael Panes plays Levi Panes (no relation, I assume), Sally’s best pal and court jester. John C. Reilly is the director desperate for a hit, who fears that Sally is sleepwalking her way through his new movie.

Jane Adams is his neurotic, anorexic wife, in the throes of postpartum depression; she looks typecast until you see her as a robust country schoolteacher in “Songcatcher,” and realize it’s just acting. The next-door neighbors are played by Denis O’Hare and Mina Badie, happy to be invited to a party with so many stars although on one side or another they seem to have known everybody there for years.

Denis O’Hare was part of the original cast of “The Broadway Melody.” Albert Hall (as himself) attends as an old friend from Joe’s theater days; he seems to know everybody there but doesn’t say much about it except for a story about shooting three different characters named Sam in movies filmed simultaneously on different soundstages at Paramount: one 1920s gangster picture set downtown (“I used my own gun”); a ’30 period piece with adulterous debutantes (“I used my own car”), then returned uptown for a ’40s noir (“I used my own hair”). Who knows what’s true? All we can say for sure is that Sam No.

2 had brown eyes and Sam No. 3 wore a mustache.

Party on, Joe.

Back when this type of movie first came out, the characters would get drunk so that they would say what they really thought (look at examples such as “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and “The Boys in the Band”). This time it is the Paltrow character who brings along the truth serum, in the form of ecstasy; she unleashes an orgy of truth-telling, sexual cheating and various other reasons to hate yourself in the morning.

The movie doesn’t simply use drugs as a story element; it understands them and weaves them into a subtle theme about addiction and recovery, so you might not notice if you don’t look close enough that there’s an alcoholic having a relapse tonight.

The appeal of the film is largely voyeuristic; we find out nothing new that we don’t more or less know already, but it’s worked over with such authenticity and unforced natural conviction that it feels like we’re being given a privileged peek into the sad lives of famous people. We’re like neighbors who’ve been invited. Leigh and Cumming co-wrote and co-directed, and are confident pros who don’t go too far with their material or themselves; this isn’t a confessional home movie but rather a cool eyed intelligent look at a lifestyle where smart people are required to live by dumb rules.

The movie was shot on digital camera. Yes, you can tell. (Critics who say it looks as good as film are like friends who claim you haven’t aged.) It lacks film’s richness and saturation but on the other hand captures spontaneity that might have been lost during long setups for lighting and camera (the shooting schedule was only four weeks). There are perfect uses for digital, and this is one of them.

Leigh, Cumming and their veteran cinematographer John Bailey wisely opt for classic cinematography discipline over handheld dizziness with their little camera treated as if it were big (every digital camera should come with a warning label: just because you can move this around a lot doesn’t mean you have to). I mentioned that some of the actors seem to be playing themselves; it might be more accurate to say they’re playing characters whom we think of as being like themselves.

Paltrow, for example, is not a mock-humble diva but rather a smart pro who grew up in the industry and probably eavesdropped on parties like this from the top of the stairs. The tone we get from the whole movie feels that knowing: Being invited to a party like this (and living these lives) is not the gold at the end of the rainbow, but what you get instead of the rainbow.

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