VOD/digital premiere for Milena Lurie's debut film, ENTANGLED

Early on in ENTANGLED, a film written and directed by newcomer Milena Lurie, our heroine/ narrator informs us that she used to be full but wanted to be empty, but now she is empty and wants to be full. Or maybe it was vice versa. Later she tells of a similar kind of situation in which she may be dreaming while awake, or awake while dreaming. By the point at which she informs us that, sometimes, she just wants to scream, you may be inclined to answer, "Honey, I know just how you feel."

Although it is being distributed via Samuel Goldwyn Films, Entangled has all the hallmarks of a vanity production -- Ms Lurie is writer, director and producer -- and I suspect from everything about this film that Lurie must be awfully young and untutored because she is telling us stuff we've seen and heard so many times before (told and shown much better) that she finally bores us silly.

For whatever reason, she has made her heroine a French ex-pat living in New York City (played by Ana Girardot, shown above, bathing) with an accent thick enough for us to need subtitles when she is speaking English). Ms Girardot is a good actress but she is lost here in the thicket of dreadful dialog she must intone.

The men in her life are played by Peter Mark Kendall (her current beau), Jonathan Cake (above, right: a pick-up at a local bar) and Grégory Fitoussi (below, right: her ex, who flies over from Paris for a one-night-stand). They all mutter dialog seemingly out of the discards of a class in Screenwriting 101. Oh, sure, miscarriage and abortions figure into things, but even they manage to seem about as shallow as all else. When miscarriage and abortion prove equal in importance to fashion, food and gossip, that, I suppose, is a very weird accomplishment.

I do hate dumping upon new filmmakers, but Ms Lurie should wait until she has something remotely worth saying that has not been said countless time previously before making another movie. It has been a long while since I felt that my time spent had been this wasted. Running 93 minutes, Entangled hit VOD and home video earlier this month. Your move....