Alan Rudolph's self-designated "serious comedy," about seekers of love in Los Angeles, is indeed a comedy in the rudimentary sense that it has a nontragic ending, and is serious in the sense that it is unfunny. The deliberate stylization of the thing, though it may cut off comments about such mundane issues as clarity and plausibility, does not disguise or excuse bad acting, which reaches its lowest point with Lesley Ann Warren and furthest from lowest with Keith Carradine. Or maybe this is just to say that Carradine is most adept at striking and holding the appropriate attitude. Attitude, in any case, is very much the thing in this coolest of cool movies. The running commentative song track by Teddy Pendergrass, used in much the same manner as Alberta Hunter's in Rudolph's Remember My Name, serves as a sort of attitudinal tuning fork. And the fastidious selection of sheets and bedspreads, framed movie posters and paintings, cool wall colors and hot neon, chimes in with a sort of visual harmony. With so much self-conscious posturing going on, and with so little else to engage interest, it is near impossible to watch this movie without forming a vivid mental image of the kind of person it hopes to impress. But any discomfort that might arise at the thought of being in the company of such persons will be alleviated by the patent unlikelihood that there can be very many of them. With Genevieve Bujold and Patrick Bauchau. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd