All the Vermeers in New York

Stars: Stephen Lack (Scanners, Dead Ringers), Emmanuelle Chaulet (Boyfriends & Girlfriends, Chocolat). What can you expect from a guy who films his genitals and offers five minutes of blank screen for audience feedback in the middle of a movie (1973's Speaking Directly)? Not much. And not much is precisely what filmmaker Jon Jost offers in All the Vermeers in New York. At a pace that would make a snail impatient, we are introduced to Anna (Chaulet) the French actress, Felicity the rich daughter, and Nicole the wannabe opera singer--three Manhattan girls sharing an apartment. After a pointless scene between an art gallery owner and an artist (characters whom we never see again), the film cuts to Mark (Lack), a stressed stockbroker, who visits the Vermeer room in the Metropolitan Museum and studies the paintings for relaxation. On one such outing, he sees Anna looking at a Vermeer and stares at her (for nearly ten minutes in real time). They have a relationship (meaning they speak to each other on three or four more occasions). I won't reveal the ending, except to say that it's worthy of a Comp 101 student in a junior college who's read a wee bit of the Romantic poets. Winner of the 1991 Best Independent Film Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, All the Vermeers in New York is a wimpy pretentious film that is short on character and story and long on endless tracking shots. Audience: Los Angeles film critics.