Basically, the film looks like a small group of actors got together over a long weekend and filmed a handful of scenes in rough form, and the surviving footage is this movie. Those actors happen to be as skilled and compelling as Samantha Morton and Jason Patric, but no matter -- no skill in the world can overcome the breathtaking misery of the filmmaking in which these performers are ensconced.
Morton is Claire, an almost chronically mild-mannered meter maid whose awkward smile seems to be a guise for pain. As the film begins, Claire gets hit by a car, which bears precisely zero significance for the rest of the story. The event has neither pay-off nor consequence; it merely sits there limp on the screen, much like most of the events that follow. Thirty seconds later, when Claire returns to her job, she meets Jay, a mustachioed parking officer who fumes with the creepy intensity of, well, Jason Patric. For some reason, be it Jay's quick temper or his tendency to spew sexist comments, Claire takes a liking to her colleague, and thus begins one of the most disjointed and depressing romances in movie history.
The two 'lovebirds' seem to occupy their parking cop jobs as a form of masochism, since everyone hates meter maids. The film underlines this point by drifting from one lame parking ticket encounter to the next like a series of silly short films that might be entertaining in small doses, but when strung together as a feature feel like mild torture. In between, the relationship turns into an uncomfortable case of a shy girl falling for an endlessly creepy guy who disparages her, as Jay's persona shifts from priggish to sensitive to misogynist to insightful and back again while Claire soulfully ponders her worth. This film is like an unseemly mish-mash of the razor-sharp nastiness of Neil LaBute and the feminist loftiness of Rodrigo Garcia, minus the talent of both.
The relationship regresses into a downward spiral of emotional abuse that is made all the more cringe-worthy because half the time it is played for awkward laughs. Emotional sadomasochism is jarring and seedy enough without the offensive attempts to wring chuckles from it. Perhaps the laughs are truly unintentional, since the movie is directed and edited with a chronic lack of skill. But in a movie where Jason Patric is made to walk around sporting a thick porn-star mustache, it's likely the filmmaker is desperately trying to score laughs at every turn.
Aberrant sexual addiction, emotional abuse, and how one influences the other is important subject matter that the cinema rarely has the guts to explore. With a clear-eyed screenplay and a competent director, this material could make for a powerful insight into depths of humanity that often go ignored. That the makers of Expired attempt to explore such rough terrain is mild consolation; that the resulting film is one of the most inept, poorly-mounted productions of the decade is severely depressing.
Wired, tired.
