newjerseynewsroom.com

BY MIRIAM RINN

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

MOVIE REVIEW

Moody and ruminative, Michael Imperioli's debut feature film "The Hungry Ghosts" follows several tormented men and women through a long night and day in and near New York City as they come to the end of their respective ropes. These folks aren't the striving glamour pusses of the Big Apple, but ordinary people who live in the cramped apartments above storefronts or row houses in the outer boroughs and surrounding towns. They're overworked and overweight, they drink too much and they neglect their kids, they're self-destructive and sad, and they feel very much alone.

Writer/director Imperioli is better known as an actor (he played Christopher Moltisanti in "The Sopranos") and he's cast this film with several of his colleagues from that extraordinary HBO series. Steve Schirripa, looking somewhat slimmer than when playing Bobby Bacala, portrays Frank, a coke-addicted late-night talk-show host. His bitter ex-wife Sharon is played by Sharon Angela, who was the bitter Rosalie Aprile on the HBO show, and the actor who played her husband, John Ventimiglia, has a small role here too.

Clearly influenced by John Cassavettes, Imperioli gives his actors a lot of space — perhaps too much — to create their characters, and while the film slides into self-indulgence at times, it maintains the mood of intense intimacy associated with Cassavettes' style of independent film. Imperioli's camera often feels intrusive in the numerous close-ups, but it never seems cruel. It gazes at these broken people with real compassion. That's not easy, for they are an unsavory bunch.

Unfortunately, this is yet another movie that introduces disparate characters and then intersects their stories. After gambling and drinking all night, Frank finally shows up for a therapy session with his teenage son Matthew, sensitively played by Emory Cohen. It's obvious Frank is a lousy father; he's too infantile to care for anyone, including himself. When Matthew storms out in fury at Frank‘s lies and excuses, Frank doesn't bother to follow him or even to call Sharon until hours later. Meanwhile, Gus (Nick Sandow) cons his way out of a detox center a few hours early and quickly sets to drinking again. His ex-lover Nadia (Aunjanue Ellis) sneaks out of her rooming house owing a month's rent and heads to her old yoga studio where she confides in a friend about her frightening passion for Gus. Careening closer to the edge, Gus leaves her increasingly despairing voice-mail messages of poetry and yearning. Meanwhile, Matthew falls in with a wealthy older couple in a sexual encounter, a scene that feels false and exploitative.

Somehow, most of these characters end up in the Catskills, looking for fresh air and maybe a fresh start. Imperioli has fun with the trepidation some city people feel in the country as Matthew, his mother, and his uncle stumble through the woods to get to a lookout spot. The contrast between the mountains and the dark city streets they've left mirrors the contrast between the two forms of salvation his characters investigate: sexuality and spirituality. This duality can seem intellectually lazy, as when Gus lectures a vulnerable young woman on Buddhism, but there's real empathy in this film for people's suffering and respect for their desperate attempts to find relief. The title refers to the Tibetan level of hell where souls with tiny mouths can never satisfy their enormous bellies. These hungry ghosts are just as insatiable and doomed.