The Emotionally Honest Easier With Practice

Comments (0) By Chuck Wilson Tuesday, Feb 23 2010

Details

Easier With Practice
Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez
Opens February 26, Quad Cinema

True story: A guy all alone in a motel room answers the bedside phone. There's a woman on the other end. She sounds young and hot, and, before he knows it, they're having phone sex. The woman begins calling the guy's cell every day, and soon he's having an intense romance with a woman he's never met. In real life, all of this happened to writer Davy Rothbart, who later went on to create Found magazine. In this surprisingly emotional fictionalized version by first-time writer-director Kyle Patrick Alvarez, the man in the motel is Davy Mitchell (Brian Geraghty, the nervous blond soldier from The Hurt Locker), a shy 28-year-old writer traveling the Southwest with his brother (Kel O'Neill) on a sweetly pathetic "book tour" for Davy's self-published story collection. It wouldn't be fair to give away any more, but the weird turns that Davy's life takes always feel emotionally honest, thanks in no small measure to Geraghty's achingly true performance. From the virtuoso 10-minute single shot that encompasses the initial phone call, to a long, traveling shot of Davy all but running from a humiliating sexual encounter, Alvarez trusts Geraghty's fear-and-wonder-filled eyes to tell the tale. These two need to make more movies together.