The Stranger

Writer-director Maria Maggenti (The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls In Love) reemerges from TV-land to present a digital feature that feels like a farce but looks like a sitcom. Shot predominantly in horrid clavicle-up close ups, the story follows Allegra (Elizabeth Reaser)—post-lesbian opera fanatic and novelist—as she gets dumped, tries out a sexy guy (Justin Kirk in glasses), then meets a sexy bubble-headed girl (Gretchen Moll) who just happens to be his ex. While Allegra juggles her lovers, Maggenti studiously freights every quip in sight with a dilettante's intellectualism: some woman on a park bench quotes Sartre (one guess which—ahem—play), Allegra hurls around "paradigm shift" like a pretentious undergrad, and the academic claims he's made assistant professor at Columbia without having finished his dissertation. Whatever you say, Ms. Maggenti. Puccini for Beginners isn't an unpleasant movie, but you wish some more care had been taken with the details. By Annie Wagner