Vikram Murthi
The brilliance of Modern Romance lies in how Brooks, as the film’s co-writer, conflates the comedic and horrific implications of its romantic premise until they are indistinguishable from one another. The film is funny because it’s kind of disturbing, not despite that fact.
The premise/gimmick features Guido Hendrikx behind the camera as he approaches the doorsteps of strangers and stands there waiting for any kind of encounter.
Altman’s point is clear: we are constantly subject to casual injustices and banal evil. People in power can be fucked with, but they are rarely ousted.
There are fantastical elements in the film, mainly the presence of ghosts who play music when Dora and, later, Mario are near death, but they never intersect with the central relationship of Mario and Marta.
Amidst isolation and precautionary measures, this week's paired-up writers find momentary solace—if not true escape—in the worlds of confounded men trying to get away from it all.
The goal doesn’t seem to be to sincerely interrogate the ways people move through the world following a devastating loss, let alone maintain baseline fidelity to the actual contours of human emotion, but rather to poke at an audience in just the right places so they can experience catharsis via fictional suffering.
Mitchell crafts a shaggy dog mystery with various potentially aimless threads to create a pervasively hallucinatory atmosphere that suggests danger behind every corner and answers just out of reach.