Alright, I take it back, some found footage is good.
Then again, not all found footage movies are this great.
New York psychiatrist Joe Glazer (Rip Torn) is going through a divorce and has taken on the name of Glassman and rented an apartment. There, he has a video camera behind a mirror that records his love life and his rambling speeches as he goes through an emotional collapse.
It also records his relationships with three women: his ex-mistress Monica (Vivica Lindfors, Creepshow), a former patient named Joann (Sally Kirkland) and Karen (Phoebe Dorin), the wife of one of his best friends.
Coming Apart was shot in a one-room, 15 × 17 foot apartment on a $60,000 budget. Director and writer Milton Moses Ginsberg filmed the entire movie with one static shot to look like a fake documentary. He would later tell Film Comment, “The film was about a psychiatrist encased in his own reflection, using a hidden camera to record his own disintegration. The film was also about the pleasures and price of promiscuity, and about the form and duration of cinema itself — or so I hoped. And to a degree that still embarrasses, it was about me. Appropriate, the title Coming Apart.”
He followed this up with — incredibly — The Werewolf of Washington.
Rip Torn is on camera for this entire movie and he owns every single moment. While the single shot may limit some viewer’s enjoyment, I found this riveting and a movie that I’d been yearning to watch. Luckily, Coming Apart has a new 2K restoration from Kino Lorber and is available to rent or own on all major Digital/VOD platforms including Kino Now.
