Matt Ross‘s 28 Hotel Rooms, which I saw yesterday afternoon, is a two-character drama about a longterm affair that happens entirely in hotel rooms and never really “goes anywhere,” story-wise. The lovers, richly portrayed by Chris Messin and Marin Ireland, are both attached in the outside world. And yes, naturally, they gradually fall in love with each other.
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But they never leave the realm of hotel rooms, and after a while (sometime around the 15th or 18th vignette) this starts to feel confining and unsatisfying. It’s a fairly absorbing film as far as it goes — there’s a spherical world of feeling and experience in Ireland’s eyes alone — but it should been called 18 Hotel Rooms or 21 Hotel Rooms or something along those lines.
I knew I was feeling antsy when Marin’s character announces at the beginning of vignette #20 or #21 that her husband is in the hotel — he’s spontaneously travelled with her to have some romantic-getaway time — so their meeting is off. The instant I heard this I knew I wanted the husband to barge into the hotel room and bust them or plead for understanding or try to beat up Messina. That told me something. I really, really wanted something more than just these two in another hotel room. Which isn’t a putdown of the actors or their performances — far from it. I just needed to escape from the concept.
Ireland is truly a superb actress. I last saw her on-stage two years ago in Neil Labute‘s reasons to be pretty.
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28 Rooms director Matt Ross, Messina, Ireland.
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