Spread

Spread
"In Los Angeles, Nikki is homeless, car-less and closing in on 30, but he's amoral, good-looking, and adept in the sack, moving from one wealthy woman of 35 or 40 to another, a kept boy-toy. His newest gig, with Samantha, an attorney whose house overlooks L.A., is sweet, although it's unclear how long she'll put up with him. Then Nikki meets Heather, a waitress. Is the player being played, or might this be love? What will Nikki discover?" 


 3.5 Stars 


Nikki (Ashton Kutcher) is living the kind of lifestyle that any man in his 20s would epitomize, any man in his 30s would question, and any man in his 40s would pity.  He spends his days lounging by the pool, his nights partying at posh houses in the Hollywood Hills, and his mornings waking up next to beautiful women.  An yet he is, by most definitions, a gigolo.  He may not actually receive money for the sex and companionship he provides, but the fact that he is jobless and homeless means that he needs these women just as much (if not more so) than they need him.


When we first meet Nikki, he seems to be at the top of his game.  The insight into the gambits he uses for wooing a woman are conveyed through voice over through out the first 20 minutes or so of the film, but they are not necessarily ground breaking.  Any guy or girl who has even a relative amount of relationship experience would realize that he is simply "playing the game."  Which is why I found it so hard to believe that Samantha (Anne Heche) would be the kind of person to fall for it.  Here is a woman in her late 30s who is single, independent, drives a Mercedes, and owns a $5 million dollar cliff side home in Los Angeles.  I started to ask myself, how am I to believe that a woman like this would fall so easily into the sophomoric game of smoke and mirrors that is this guy's bread and butter?  And then, well, it dawned on me.  Maybe she wanted to.  The writer does an adequate job of hinting at the personal issues that have brought Nikki and Samantha to their respective points in their lives, and why they may just be exactly what each other needs at the moment, even if it's far from healthy.


Most importantly, the film does a good job of avoiding any kind of glorification of Nikki's life.  While he is constantly surrounded by beauty and opulence, there are subtle but persistent feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction.  While any guy would probably trade places with him for a week, I can't think of anyone that would actually want his life.  He is in his prime, sure, but there doesn't seem to be a gradual decline in store for him.  Instead, there is a looming feeling of a dark of a future with nothing but the hope of rock bottom to eventually and mercifully end his fall.


Enter Heather, played by a thoroughly intoxicating Margarita Levieva.  Up to this point in the film, Kutcher does a decent job of playing an emotionally distant narcissist who is trying just a little too hard to make people think that he doesn't care.  But when the sparks start flying between their two characters, I think that the acting gets taken to a whole new level.  As much as I hate to say it, Kutcher is better when he plays a character that shows heart, and that's what finally comes out when these two characters start their relationship.  


But things aren't always what they seem and the realization that Heather is living the same lifestyle as Nikki brings a whole new dynamic to the film that makes the earlier transgressions almost seem tame.  These are two emotionally damaged people who are almost beyond repair and their relationship becomes, for lack of a better phrase, fucked up.  The actual thought that these people are going to live happily ever after is a pipe dream and any semblance of a "Hollywood Ending" would have completely sunk the movie.  Luckily, the film stays true to form and, while I may not think the conclusion was quite harsh enough, there is enough stark reality tied in to make the film worthwhile.