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Painful Subjects

John Krasinski (best known as "Jim" from "The Office") makes his directorial debut with "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men." Adapted from the late David Foster Wallace's short story collection, Krasinski leaves the source material largely alone, choosing to remix rather than rewrite. The results, likewise, are mixed.

The one big -- and effective -- liberty Krasinski takes with Foster Wallace is creating anthropology graduate student Sara Quinn (Julianne Nicholson). This allows Krasinksi to put the words of certain subjects from the book into the mouths of people in Sara's life, and links the interviews more explicitly together.

Sara is spurred to write a dissertation on the male psyche after being inexplicably betrayed and dumped by her boyfriend, Ryan (Krasinski). As research, she conducts a series of interviews with different morally compromised male subjects, and hopes to find an answer to the question posed by every broken heart: why?

The subjects are each hideous in their own fashion, comprised of different ratios of the comic, tragic, pathetic, and horrific. Not surprisingly, some of these monologues are more successful than others, and taken together they create a speed-dating-for-sociopaths effect.

"Subject #14" (Ben Shenkman) confesses to his compulsion to shout "Victory for the forces of democratic freedom!" whenever he orgasms. "Subject #40" (Bobby Cannavale) uses his missing arm, which his friends call "the asset," to manipulate and bed sympathetic women. Two commentator bystanders, "Kevin" and "Evan" (Max Minghella and Lou Taylor Pucci) act as a kind of greek chorus, appearing fortuitously throughout the film, offering stray bits of arrogance and ignorance.

"Subject #42" (Frankie Faison) and his father (Malcolm Goodwin) occupy a standalone scene within the film. #42 is angered and shamed by his father, who worked as a bathroom attendant. This highly dramatized monologue has the subject confronting a younger version of his father on a luxurious bathroom set. Though perhaps the most moving scene in the film, it is oddly detached from the rest in style and substance.

At a "brief" 80 minutes, one wonders why more characters in the film were not fleshed out more fully. Not further developing Sara's professor (Timothy Hutton) or their student/teacher relationship is one strikingly wasted opportunity.

Despite inspired efforts and devices to link Sara's professional interviews with her personal life, "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" is more like an acting exercise than a movie, and feels like walking into a group therapy session for monologists. A seeming labor of love, "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" doesn't end so much as stop, and feels sadly like Wallace's life: unfinished.