If Woody Allen, at the height of his smugness, were to make yet another angst-ridden, New York romance and add a lesbian twist, it might look something like the insufferable Puccini for Beginners. Painfully pleased with its own cleverness, of which there isn’t much, the movie follows a romantic triangle involving an on-the-rocks New York couple (Gretchen Mol and Justin Kirk) and the lesbian opera lover (Elizabeth Reaser) who seduces both of them.
Writer-director Maria Maggenti does a lot of playing with form – Reaser’s Allegra confides in us via voiceover; passerby often break character to offer her advice – but she does so with an off-putting, self-impressed flair.
The jokes, meanwhile, are only funny to New Yorkers (one-liners about stabilized rent) or to no one at all.
