Although Dex is shamefully cruel to his awful fiancée (Amelia Workman, taking it on the chin), he’s pretty much the same guy we met on that night flight. But when they are torn from their fantasy and returned to their normal lives, the contrasts are really shocking. Lovers will lie, as lovers are wont to do, and Shellie and Dex run true to form. Parisse, who can play just about anything (and has, in shows from Off Broadway’s “Becky Shaw” to TV’s “Law & Order”) takes Shellie from clever and funny (if emotionally needy) and transforms her into incredibly sexy.
No wonder these two fall into one another’s arms when American Airlines offers them a free overnight at the Marriott.ĭirector Trip Cullman knows exactly what to do with his well-matched principals when he gets them into their hotel room.
“I want to be the one who understands you - right now,” he tells her when she admits to feeling misunderstood. “I absolutely lust for loneliness,” Shellie tells Dex when he informs her he’s getting married because he’s afraid of spending the rest of his life alone. The smart dialogue she’s written for these would-be lovers is interesting and quite sexy.
Confidential” and “The Black Dahlia.”Īs anyone knows who has seen the writer’s play and film “ Bachelorette” in any of its various iterations, Headland has a whiplash tongue that makes her a whiz at acerbic cosmopolitan chit-chat. He’s an engineer who works in boring San Diego, but knows from noir literary touchstones like “L.A. She teaches American Crime Fiction at Hunter College and has the noir sensibility and vocabulary to carry off her odd profession. Shellie (the divine Parisse) and Dex (Rothenberg, Mister Charm with a disarming grin) aren’t exactly Bogie and Baby, but they suit one another quite nicely when they find themselves grounded at O’Hare on Thanksgiving.
Oh, look, there’s Bogart and Mary Astor in “The Maltese Falcon,” and here comes a string of dangerous dames like Ruth Roman and Lisbeth Scott and Veronica Lake bent on seducing lovesick saps like Glenn Ford and Alan Ladd. Lest we miss the point, the back wall of the set is cut into small rectangular screens resembling film strips that video designer Jeff Sugg has filled with heavy-breathing love scenes between tarnished heroes and femmes fatales from memorable films noir of the ’40s and ’50s.