OTHER VOICES

Salutation: “Have a nice day!” Response: “I have other plans.” Imagine a cosmopolitan relationship tale by Jules Pfeiffer crossed with the Coen Brothers at their most deceptive and you have OTHER VOICES, a psychodrama as cool, sleek, and potentially lethal as the electrified steel rail in a subway tunnel. A Manhattan couple in a troubled marriage play dangerous games of infidelity and mistrust, eyes wide open and emotions wide shut, an interpersonal whirlpool that drags several bystanders into its inky depths. Poor communications and resentment have driven a wedge between John and Anna after ten years together, to the point that each toys with seeing other people. Phil, John's best friend, suggests taking the offense ? hiring a shady corporate private eye to follow the wife to her trysts. Meanwhile, Anna's unstable brother Jeff, suspicious of John, has had similar ideas of his own and is acting on them, even as his own self-control disintegrates. It's a fin-de-siecle portrait of New York City as a glittering hive of over-medicated, over therapied, white-collar drones languishing in their sterile office cubicles and apartments, and easy prey to primal drives of rage, jealousy, escape, and possessiveness.