The movie has a nervy central image of an imposing house perched atop the spectacular California coastline in the Big Sur the men have secured for their reunion. Tim (Christian McKay) is the most enigmatic of a bunch, sensitive though aloof loner. Jonathan (Rob Lowe) is a doctor whose practice appears mostly to be about taking bribes to write false prescriptions for his wealthy female clients. Ron (Jeremy Piven) is a brilliant financial advisor who is being investigated by federal authorities. The four are introduced in a delirious roll call: Richard (Thomas Jane), the nominal leader, is the ruggedly good looking wastrel, a novelist whose writing career has stalled and who now gets by teaching English. Pellington developed the story with screenwriter Glenn Porter about four middle-aged men, college friends, whose annual get together is an epic and frenzied bacchanalia of mind numbing substance abuse and outrageous revelry. The movie world premiered at Sundance, and it was acquired by Magnolia Pictures. (There’s even an extract from the notorious Tom Snyder interview with the Pistols’ Johnny Rotten for added atmosphere and backdrop.) The title is taken from the classic Modern English song, and the movie’s sleek, jet accelerated tempo is fashioned to the blindingly anarchic and powerfully liberating strains of English punk, especially the Clash and Sex Pistols. A perfect pop moment that didn't have to strain for it, its balance of giddy sentiment and heartfelt passion matched with a rush of acoustic and electric guitar overdubs just can't be beat.Sundance Film Festival (World premiere)–The camera dives, floats and swirls about fastidiously in Mark Pellington’s “I Melt with You,” an alternately provocative, disturbing and frustratingly opaque work about male vanity, narcissism and the crisis of masculinity. Still, "I Melt with You" is the main reason most will want to investigate further. Some songs, like "Face of Wood," even find Modern English - often dogged with Joy Division comparisons early on - predicting where New Order would go before that band got there itself. The former's seemingly mannered singing actually shows a remarkable fluidity at points - "After the Snow" again is a good reference point, as is the fraught, slow-burn epic "Dawn Chorus" - while McDowell works around the band's various arrangements instead of trying to dominate them. None of this is to denigrate the contributions of singer Robbie Grey and guitarist Gary McDowell. That said, the secret weapon on the album is the rhythm section of Michael Conroy and Richard Brown, able to shift from the polite but relentless tribal beat clatter on the excellent "Life in the Gladhouse" to the ever more intense punch of the title track, the album's unheralded masterpiece. Like contemporaries B-Movie and the Sound, Modern English used punk and post-punk roots as a chance to introduce a haunting, beautiful take on romance and emotion, while the contributions of Stephen Walker on keyboard helped make the album both of its time and timeless. Indeed, in transforming from the quite fine but dour young miserabilists on Mesh & Lace to a brighter incarnation who still had a melancholy side, the quintet found exactly the right combination best-suited for their abilities. "I Melt with You" will forever be the one specific moment that's Modern English's place in pop history, but the album it came from, After the Snow, isn't anything to sneeze at either.
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