Love in the Time of Money

Former theater writer/director Peter Mattei makes his feature debut that desperately clings to Hollywood’s overplayed motto that sex sells. This wasted effort involves nine different New Yorkers, all of whom apparently do nothing much but have sex, think about having sex, and basically just live for sex. Therefore, if you’re a depressed housewife, why not have sex with a freelance contractor during a house call visit? If you’re undeniably a heterosexual political artist of controversial triangles, you always can sleep with your buyer who is of the same gender. Heck, even if you’re a guilty embezzler on the verge of suicide, there’s always time for phone sex with a soothsayer on her psychic hotline. The shallow and separated scenes are choreographed like a disjointed staged play, shot in digital video with a gritty, grainy look that mirrors the anguish and banality of the characters we don’t care about and the empty theme that should have been retired long ago.