A Man is Mostly Water

The title refers to a melancholy blues tune sung at the end, and it's the best part of the movie. The blues aficionado is Roper (Fred Parnes, who also wrote and directed), and he has reason to be singing them. The movie about Mississippi Delta bluesmen he poured his soul into can't find a distributor; his ex-wife, a radio pop psychologist, freely refers to his limitations when counseling women on the air; and his latest girlfriend is a classical musician. For recreation, Roper teaches his son chords on the guitar, pins rejection letters to a wall, and chastises other drivers for their rudeness and incompetence. No wonder his wife left him.

Since Roper seems neither funny nor talented, it's hard to sympathize, and neither do the other characters with whom Parnes interweaves his hero's life have much appeal: Andy (Christopher Rydell), an idle pothead who takes his love affair with golf way too seriously, and Andy's friend Jeff, a black actor dithering his career away playing stereotypes in commercials. Sometimes this film rises to moments of genuine poignancy and rueful wit. And sometimes it just begs the question asked by Mark Rydell's unimpressed distributor: why should we care? Screens Thursday, September 14 at 7:15 and 10 p.m. and Friday, September 15 at 11:15 a.m. and 1:45 and 4:15 p.m. Director Fred Parnes will appear at Thursday's 7:15 screening.

-- Peter Keough

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Film Festival Feature Films

| A Fight to the Finish: Stories of Polio | A Man is Mostly Water | A Trial in Prague | Blessed Art Thou | Charming Billy | Enemies of Laughter | Enlightenment Guaranteed | The Exorcist | Harry, He's Here to Help | Into the Arms of Strangers | Just Looking | Ratcatcher | Seven Girlfriends | Two Family House | The Yards | You Can Count On Me |

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