A quiet comic masterpiece, Living in Oblivion (1995) takes a simple, low-budget idea and spins it into gold. Full of amusing metafictional flourishes, it follows the increasingly doomed efforts of an independent film crew to produce a feature film on a shoestring budget. The beleaguered director is Nick Reve (Steve Buscemi), a wanna-be visionary struggling to realize his dream with an inept crew and limited resources. He also has a secret crush on his leading lady Nicole (Catherine Keener), who for her part is having a crisis of acting confidence. Meanwhile, the romantic male lead, Chad Palomino (James LeGros), is a posturing narcissist whose clumsy one-night stand with Nicole has complicated crucial onscreen chemistry. Their efforts to make headway with the production are complicated by all manner of low-key, kooky mishaps that eventually threaten to derail the project.
Unfolding over three trippy acts that riff amusingly on The Wizard of Oz, Living in Oblivion isn’t do anything monumental: it’s a film-within-a-film comedy that wears its love of cinema on its sleeve as it reflects on the challenges and serendipities of the business. But the execution is adroit, and it all unfolds with mounting confidence in its carefully crafted tone, using rhythmic repetition and surprise to both poke fun at and celebrate the collaborative creative process of a challenging medium. Buscemi and Keener alone are enough to sell me on just about anything, but there’s so much delightful comic support, from LeGros, Kevin Corrigan, Peter Dinklage, Dermot Mulroney, Danielle von Zerneck, and more. It may not be saying much, but what it does say is hilarious.
