Photo: Selma Blair as Vi in Todd Solondz's Storytelling
Todd Solondz is sensitive to criticism, a fear he hypocritically lays bare throughout Storytelling, an oftentimes funny but cowardly auto-critique. In the film's first part, Vi (Selma Blair) and her fellow classmates translate real-life woe into creative writing assignments for the stolid Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom), a Pulitzer Prize-winner for the fictional Sunday Lynching. Marcus (Neil Fitzpatrick), a horny teen with cerebral palsy, transcribes his sex life with Vi onto paper, but his affliction doesn't excuse him from the censure of his fellow students. "Fiction" is the cinematic equivalent of a Dan Savage column, except Solondz's evocation of his own fetishistic qualms is nowhere near as deliciously catty as a Savage whip. Imagine Solondz as a sex columnist, opening a letter from a confused white teen wondering if it's okay to call her lover a "nigger" while having sex. Less concerned with deconstructing political correctness than he is with deflating criticism through self-reflectivity, "Fiction" is the director's apologia for absolutely everything he does.
Todd Solondz is sensitive to criticism, a fear he hypocritically lays bare throughout Storytelling, an oftentimes funny but cowardly auto-critique. In the film's first part, Vi (Selma Blair) and her fellow classmates translate real-life woe into creative writing assignments for the stolid Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom), a Pulitzer Prize-winner for the fictional Sunday Lynching. Marcus (Neil Fitzpatrick), a horny teen with cerebral palsy, transcribes his sex life with Vi onto paper, but his affliction doesn't excuse him from the censure of his fellow students. "Fiction" is the cinematic equivalent of a Dan Savage column, except Solondz's evocation of his own fetishistic qualms is nowhere near as deliciously catty as a Savage whip. Imagine Solondz as a sex columnist, opening a letter from a confused white teen wondering if it's okay to call her lover a "nigger" while having sex. Less concerned with deconstructing political correctness than he is with deflating criticism through self-reflectivity, "Fiction" is the director's apologia for absolutely everything he does.
