Living Out Loud

Judith (Hunter) is divorced and lonely. For all the intense conversations going on in her head, when she talks to Pat (DeVito), the elevator man in her NY apartment building, it's the first meaningful human contact she's had in weeks. Pat is no one's idea of a dreamboat, but he may just be Judith's best hope. The film namechecks Looking for Mr Goodbar and plays like a contemporary revision of that once notorious story. Gone, mercifully, is the bloody retribution; instead, there's a very open, hard-won sense of female liberation enacted both in outrageous fantasy sequences and, more subtly, in the central, not-quite-romantic relationship. Scriptwriter LaGravenese proves a whimsical, sympathetic director (in his first feature), but his playfulness sometimes leads him astray. Inspired by Chekhov's stories The Kiss and Misery, the movie's too cute to be more than remotely plausible. Still, it's honestly felt and pitched with some charm by the leads, Martin Donovan and the redoubtable Queen Latifah.