There are actually very few films at the Tribeca Film Festival that are filmed in the city where the festival takes place, and even fewer that boast well-known actors and are actually any good. Somehow Monogamy manages to be both, a film set in modern gentrified Brooklyn and starring Chris Messina and Rashida Jones as a couple on the verge of marriage, comfortable and in love but maybe not as perfect as they could. Messina's character is the center of the film, a photographer who becomes obsessed with one of his subjects (Meital Dohan), a mysterious woman who as free with her sex life as he feels constricted in his own.
You can read more of my take on Monogamy in my review here, then check out the conversation I had with Messina, Dohan and the film's director Dana Adam Shapiro, who previously made his mark as a documentarian with the film Murderball. Our conversation was an uncommonly long 30 minutes, and an uncommonly good one-- we got into detailed discussions about the main character's morality, different potential readings of scenes in the film, and how the Brooklyn setting affects the film's events. Some of that made it into the review, but the interview is spoiler-free, and should be accessible to anyone who hasn't seen the film (which, of course, is nearly everyone).
I thought it was particularly interesting to hear Shapiro talk about how his documentary filmmaking experience affected making his first narrative film, and for Messina to contrast this role with his part in last summer's Julie & Julia, in which he played another New York man living with his beloved, but in very, very different circumstances. The mustache you seem him sporting isn't just a coincidence-- Messina is showing a darker side in this film and is thrilled about it. Check out the edited interview below.
Follow along with all of our special, Tribeca 2010 coverage right here.
