You know you've got a small cast when the fourth-highest billed actor is Mary Testa credited for her role as "receptionist."
In fact, the cast of "The Business of Strangers," the first feature film written and directed by Patrick Stettner, comprises just Stockard Channing ("Grease," "Six Degrees of Separation") as the under-pressure VP of a firm, Julia Stiles ("Save the Last Dance," "State and Main") as her couldn't care less assistant, and Frederick Weller (he played Brian Wilson in TV's "The Beach Boys") as a high-powered headhunter that the two women encounter during a business trip.
Channing is Julie Styron, a successful businesswoman with a community college education, who is on a business trip, one of apparently many she makes each week. We see her bustling through airport concourses and hotel lobbies, always on her cell phone checking in with her secretary back home.
In fact, some of the most suspenseful moments of the film come early on as Styron is moving through these anonymous spaces, before we even really know much about her and before we have any idea what the film is about. Many of the over lighted shots of modern airports look like stills from architecture magazines.
{INSERT_RELATED}At one presentation, Styron is angered when the audio/visual assistant sent by her firm -- whom she has never met before -- arrives 45 minutes late. Paula Murphy (Stiles) explains her flight was delayed, but Styron phones her assistant -- while Murphy is standing there -- and demands Murphy be fired.
Back at the hotel, Styron sets up a meeting with Nick Harris (Weller). Because she fears that she is being fired (a board meeting was called in her absence), she is hoping that Harris, a headhunter, can get her another job. They meet and then part. Styron then learns she has been made CEO and she tells Harris when they bump into each other.
Back at the hotel bar, Styron runs into Murphy and apologizes and the two strong-willed women seem to connect, seeing some of themselves in each other. But they are not really alike, having come from different backgrounds and having different ideas about life. This really comes into focus when Harris, whose flight has been canceled, shows up in the airport bar and things really heat up.
The compact cast and relatively tight location of a single hotel give "The Business of Strangers" the feel of a stage production. But the alluring photography of the exterior and interior scenes add a deeper dimension.
What is most intriguing about this character study is that we never quite know any of the characters. Who is guilty, who is innocent, who can be trusted, who is lying? Our assumptions are challenged and turned upside down at every turn. Whether or not we care is an altogether different question.
At just 83 minutes long, "The Business of Strangers" whizzes by like a commuter jet and when the (brief) credits rolled, this reviewer was left pondering whether he liked what he had just seen. In fact, that's the result of the ambiguity of the film and it is that ambiguity that makes "The Business of Strangers" an interesting film. Unlike so many Hollywood pics that clearly define the good guys and the bad guys, Stettner forces us to ponder human nature and draw our own conclusions.
I think most of us are capable of doing that.
"The Business of Strangers" opens Fri., March 8 at Landmark's Downer Theatre.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
