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Charlie Kaufman, cinema’s standard-bearer of magical realism, continues to mine slippery tunnels of flawed romantic human emotion with film titles geared to trip up the average moviegoer. The same would-be audiences who stayed away from Kaufman’s estimable last feature (“Synecdoche, New York), because they couldn’t be bothered to learn a new word, will have just as much reason to skip over “Anomalisa.”
But, if you have the slightest sense of daring about the movies you watch, this unconventional picture is worth your while. The title comes from a reference in the dialogue.
The faces of Kaufman’s stop-action puppet characters have seams that lend a purposefully artificial construct to the filmmaker’s deadpan, if refreshing, representation of such personal moments as a hotel room seduction between two strangers.
Indeed, this film’s most powerful sequence occurs before, during, and after Michael (David Thewlis) and Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh) take a roll in the hey in his hotel room. Michael is a family man and respected author of corporate-themed books, visiting Cincinnati overnight to deliver a speech before a group of industry professionals. His primary objective is to get laid. An obnoxious cabbie orders Michael to visit the city zoo and eat some of the town’s “famous” chili during his limited time in town.
Upon arrival at his hotel Michael calls up an old lover from a decade ago. Her voice is masculine. For awhile it seems that Michael is gay. Michael’s sense of hearing a feminine voice is a key to his defenses, of which there are many. Things don’t go so well when the ex shows up at the hotel bar to meet Michael for a drink. She gets quickly insulted when he invites her up to his room for some hanky-panky.
Writer/co-director Kaufman gets inside the micro-elements that make human communication so fraught with confusion. The dialogue hits your ear wrong because it comes from characters for which painful interactions are what’s on the menu.
Although Kaufman rushes the film’s ending (budgetary constraints perhaps?), he delivers an exquisite romantic interaction between two imperfect people. The shy small talk they make while flirting and drinking, rings with soulful romantic truths that few filmmakers could capture so patiently. Okay, I’ll say it; “Anomalisa” is what they call a gem.
Rated R. 90 mins.
