Alain Guiraudie's Staying Vertical may not be the worst film I've seen this year at the New York Film Festival (it looks like that dubious honor will be going to Alison Maclean's The Rehearsal), but it's easily the stupidest. There's a scene in this movie where a straight man lovingly, tenderly sodomizes an old man to death. I just...what? I can't understand a single creative decision in this film. I think I get what it was going for: a slightly absurdist, deconstructionist view of the idea of humanity vis-à-vis the cycle of birth, life, death, and whatnot. But I don't know. It just doesn't work. Is this film comedic? Tragic? Serious? All three? What's the significance of any of it? Why do the hobos rob the main character naked? What literary agent would allow their client to shirk their writing responsibilities long enough to conceive and father a child while still financing them? Why did the same 2-3 characters keep popping up in everybody elses' houses? Why the constant shots of the main female character's vagina? Seriously, I think we may see more close-ups of her vagina than her face! I wasn't alone in thinking this film ridiculous, the other critics laughed at it, too.
2/10
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