The Anniversary Party

ArtSavant will inform, provoke, & amuse.

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At the end of June, ArtSavant caught this new movie, a collaborative project from Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming. The two met backstage at Cabaret, where he was playing the Emcee and she would soon play Sally Bowles. Each was developing ideas of writing and directing a movie about grown-up relationships, and The Anniversary Party is the well-crafted result. The film spans 24 hours: the day an uneasily happy couple, recently reconciled, celebrates their 6th anniversary with a few old friends and a few not-quite-welcome guests.

"The writing of this script was amazingly effortless," says Leigh, "I am fascinated by relationships, by how difficult and flawed and beautiful they are, and by the lengths to which people will go to hold on to them."

Adds Cumming: "The whole thing wrote itself without us really noticing. We wanted to show how the things that we want the most in life - close friendships and great loves - are the very same things that unhinge us the most, that have us behaving badly."