God's Waiting Room
Two indie romances act as unlikely companion pieces, in both good ways and bad, in this year's Tribeca festival. Mark, Mary & Some Other People and God’s Waiting Room don’t have a lot in common beyond the fact that they’re both tumultuous romances, of a sort, that happen to be playing in the U.S. Narrative Film at this year’s Tribeca Festival. Yet they feel, somehow, insistently compatible, in their later-stage failings moreso than their early-going successes. They also both raise some provocative questions about indie cinema, albeit not necessarily ones that the filmmakers intended. Mark, Mary & Some Other People asks: has there ever been a good movie about a couple experimenting with an open relationship, swinging, or any other kind of multi-partner sexual situation? It’s been the basis for so many indie comedies that try to offer something transgressive before beating a hasty retreat back to traditionalism that portrays non-monogamy as a kind of hellish obstacle course, even as the characters try their best to articulate why monogamy is unnatural. Continue Reading →