Unmade Beds

REVIEW
Mostly disturbing, at times amusing, but ultimately tiresome, Unmade Beds is a voyeuristic peek into the lives of four of New York City’s legion of lonely hearts. Using a twist on documentary form, director Barker compiled hours of interviews with his four subjects and then wrote scripts for them to enact on camera — so we have real people playing themselves in a talking head interview format. The characters themselves are interesting — to a degree. There’s Copp, a portly 28-year-old Midwestern transplant who’s on the rebound having been dumped by a “submissive:” De Stefano is a somewhat gawky Brooklyn native who’s desperately seeking a wife (for all the wrong reasons); Monte is a Staten Island mol who’s just looking for a rich guy to marry her and pay her debts (strictly a business transaction); and, finally, Russo, a smarmy Dennis Hopper-like character who prowls the streets in search of one-night stands. Individually their stories are fascinating, repulsive, heartrending and perverse, but taken as a whole, their overall impact is downright depressing and aimless. Still, one can’t help being drawn in by a kind morbid curiosity as Barker uncovers their lives and forces us to watch as if it were a train wreck.