IFC Films
Samantha Morton as Marilyn Monroe and Denis Lavant as Charlie Chaplin in "Mister Lonely."
Scott Fitzgerald's maxim that there are no second acts in American lives has been proven wrong so often that it now seems like a grotesque misunderstanding. He was talking about himself, I guess. By dying in alcoholic despair at 44, Fitzgerald denied himself the chance to write a tell-all memoir, weep on Dr. Phil's shoulder and pronounce himself a new man. Harmony Korine, the skate-punk Fitzgerald of the mid-'90s, is back for his second act now, it appears. It begins with a pleasant surprise. Korine hasn't released a feature film in nine years, and his new "Mister Lonely" is richer and sweeter than anything he's ever made. After making its way around the festival globe, from Cannes last spring to Toronto, South by Southwest and now Tribeca, it's finally opening theatrically in New York (and is widely available on IFC's pay-cable platform).
If I begin by telling you that "Mister Lonely" has two unrelated narratives, and then telling you what they are -- an unconsummated romance between a Michael Jackson impersonator and a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, and a story about nuns who miraculously learn to fly -- you might just heave a heavy sigh and move on. Can I convince you that both stories are lovely and almost unbearably sad, and that the connection between them is some undefinable kind of lighter-than-air atheist spirituality? Hell, I'm not sure I can convince myself.