FAST FOOD FAST WOMEN (2001)

If the title strikes you as clever, as opposed to sounding like a pun dropped by a Catskills nightclub comic in 1972, you might just enjoy Amos Kollek's drama about a collection of aging New York lonely hearts who roll their eyes in the face of romantic desperation. (They're oy-ing through their tears.) Kollek is a fringe auteur who makes independent films the old-fashioned way: no budget, static camera, a script that telegraphs its tiny, paste-gem ironies. As Bella, a cynical but ''free spirited'' coffee-shop waitress, Anna Thomson has the look of a damaged Barbie doll and a blase delivery that's meant to (barely) camouflage her character's inner hurt. Victor Argo, with his morose bulldog mug, is touching as a man who becomes infatuated with a peep-show stripper, but this is just one of many story lines that Kollek botches with his chintzy, urban-fairy-tale sentimentality.

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