“I have seen one of the wisest films I can remember about love and human intimacy,” Roger Ebert wrote a couple of days ago about Jeff Lipsky’s Flannel Pajamas…which I just saw this afternoon. “It is a film of integrity and truth, acted fearlessly, written and directed with quiet, implacable skill. [And] I will not forget it.” Nor will I. Pajamas is a very smart and probing film about an adult relationship that eventually goes bad. But after a while (after about 90 minutes, give or take) I started to really, really hate it, and I finally couldn’t stand another minute and left. What I really mean is, I couldn’t tolerate the character played by Julianne Nicholson, who plays one of the draggiest pain-in-the-ass bad girlfriend/death-wife characters ever created for the screen. She is the sort of woman-with-very-bad- baggage who frowns like it’s going out of style and always has a bug up her ass about something and has no sense of humor and has a very cold mother and who brings everything and everyone down with her pissy moods. Nicholson is so convincing that I don’t want to ever see her again. Seriously — if she is in a film I will think seriously about not going to it. I don’t mean to say I didn’t respect Flannel Pajamas. It’s up to something real and different and chilly and complex, but I had to leave and I’m glad I did. Justin Kirk‘s lead character is no day at the beach either. She wants a dog and he says no? What’s his problem? Ebert said in the same piece that the film “is so truthful and observant, so subtle and knowing about human nature, that it may be too much for most audiences. Moviegoers demand a little something in the way of formula, if only for reassurance, or as a road sign.” No — the problem is that the two main characters become more and more of a migraine headache, and it finally gets so bad you want Nicholson to get killed in a car crash so the film can take a different turn.