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In Jonathan Parker's spry and spiky satire (Untitled), the composer in question, Adrian, is played by Adam Goldberg as a black hole of self-fulfilling failure. When first spotted, he's riven with conflicting jealousy and disgust over the success of his brother Josh's (Eion Bailey) art. Josh sells tonally neutral paintings to hospitals and hotels looking for soothing, repeatable pieces that don't conflict with the décor. As comfortable as Josh is with his success, Adrian is torn apart by his lack of it -- he performs atonal noise-explosions that seem designed to drive away listeners, even though bemoans his lack of success.
This schizophrenia comes to a head when Adrian falls for Josh's dealer, Madeline (Marley Shelton, bright and spectacular), avant-garde art lover who supports her adventurous tastes by secretly selling Josh's mainstream work out of the back office. A perky vision of modernity in stylish frames and extremely noisy clothing (her wardrobe is itself a work of sonic art), Madeline piques Josh's jealousy when she makes clear that, against all odds, she loves Adrian's music. All three become tangled up in their unresolved (and unacknowledged) needs to be both commercially successful and yet also recognized for their artistic vision.
(Untitled) gets a lot of comic mileage out of Adrian's concerts, where piano, percussion, and clarinet fly off on solo screeds unrelated to what the other instruments are doing. But where Parker's film (co-written with Catherine di Napoli) sets itself apart from other comedies that mine the rich vein of self-absorbed creative people producing uncomfortable art for its own sake. (Untitled) acknowledges the basic ridiculousness of what it's presenting -- hard not to when a newly commissioned piece of Adrian's turns out to be several long moments of silence, with sheet music -- while refusing to truly ridicule it.
A case in point is an exhibit at Madeline's gallery by Ray (Vinnie Jones, brilliantly cast against type), a British shock-merchant of the Damien Hirst variety. His taxidermy pieces all involve stuffed animals in various stages of injury, whether it's a cat staple-gunned to a pristine white wall or a deer in a barber's chair with a severed ear. Just like the old dictum about pornography, you know modern art when you see it, and this is it. The mix of antagonism and dare-you-laugh absurdity isn't the sort of thing one is usually asked to mock in comedies that tweak perceived elites, this is art that one could very easily see in a weak year at the Whitney Biennial. And while much of Adrian's music is truly unlistenable, some of the pieces make sense amidst the chaos in a John Cage way, and wouldn't have been out of place at a downtown gallery opening a decade back. Even the most ridiculous character, a Johnny-come-lately collector played with divine cluelessness by Zak Orth, seems as though he could be viewed on the streets of Chelsea, today
In taking its art and artists so seriously even as it tweaks their pretensions, (Untitled) turns itself into a comedy with unexpected bite, particularly as its triumvirate of protagonists start reassessing their place in the world. The feeling one is left with at the end of this knowing comedy is not the complacent satisfaction of having seen the pretentious fall. Instead we're given some small understanding of the toll exacted by the creative process, and the astounding rewards offered by the artist knowing that just one person has realized what it was that they were trying to do.
