Ellie Parker Reviews

The shadow of Naomi Watts' dazzling audition scene in MULHOLLAND DR. (2001) — the breakthrough moment within her breakthrough performance as Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn — hangs heavily over this inconsequential Hollywood satire, which was cobbled together from four short films (the first of which was shot before MULHOLLAND DR. and warmly received at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival) that are built around aspiring actress Parker (Watts). Chronically unemployed and mired in an unrewarding relationship with unfaithful aspiring-rocker Justin (Mark Pellegrino), Parker spends her days taking classes, drinking with her agent (Chevy Chase), commiserating with her equally thwarted friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg) and shuttling from audition to audition, changing clothes, wigs, makeup and accents in her car as she transforms herself from tragic Southern belle to hard-bitten Brooklyn hooker between cell-phone calls. She meets Chris (writer-director Scott Coffey) when he smashes into her car, and they begin an on-again/off-again relationship even though the first two things he tells her — that he's a cinematographer and, the next time they meet, that he's not actually the guy who hit her car, but that guy's twin brother — are bald-faced lies. Shot on low-end digital video, the movie looks harsh and the sound is often dodgy, which wouldn't matter if the material were inherently more interesting. Watts is good — occasionally very good — and her willingness to be filmed at unflattering angles, in pore-wallowing or with bright blue ice cream smeared on her face is admirable. But in the end Ellie's travails aren't very interesting, except perhaps to frustrated actors looking for confirmation that it's the system, not any failing on their part, that keeps them trapped on a treadmill of fruitless auditions and callbacks that lead nowhere.