Playing by Heart

The Guitar
Running time 95 minutes
Written by Amos Poe
Directed by Amy Redford
Starring Saffron Burrows, Paz de la Huerta, Isaach De Bankolé

The Guitar is a modern New York fable about a woman simultaneously dumped by her boyfriend, fired from her job and diagnosed with inoperable cancer. At this point, what good are Reiki massages, guidance counselors and Hallmark cards? So mousey Melody (Saffron Burrows) short-term leases a loft penthouse, orders a Vera Wang bed, orders from every restaurant in Greenwich Village and maxes out her credit cards. Indulging in every childhood fantasy in a materialistic orgy sponsored by Visa, she becomes the envy of everyone trapped in a gray and meaningless world who would happily go on a rampage of luxury objects promising redemption if they could just afford it. Her prize possession: a red guitar and speakers powerful enough to be heard across the river in Hoboken. While she’s at it, Melody also opens a new window to sexual desires long since suppressed, with a black deliveryman and a girl who drops off takeout pizzas. Eventually, they return to their ordinary workaday lives, but for Melody, there’s no next plateau. She shoots the moon.

The kicker comes when, after three months, her lease expires and she’s still not dead. She’s outlived her debts, so she goes back to her doctor and here comes the shock: Statistically, there’s no reason, but she’s miraculously cured. Suddenly she’s got a future and no way to pay for it. Devaluation on the things she accumulated on her three-month binge ring her only a fraction of their value, but there’s one thing she will not sell. She’s bankrupt, homeless, friendless and lost, but at least she can play the guitar. Written by Amos Poe and directed with moxie by Amy Redford, it’s the ultimate movie about optimism. She’s Robert Redford’s daughter, so she knows how to tell a good story. Like her father, she also has a healthy regard for narrative, and for the dying art of independent films that say something. What this one says is that no matter how bad it gets, even if you’re living under a tree in Central Park, as long as you can play the guitar you can always join a rock band.

The economic crisis threatens to force the demise of indie prods as we know them now. This is a good thing and a bad thing, but if you care either way, the time to dance around their bonfire is now, and The Guitar is a good place to start.

rreed@observer.com