Somewhere in the City

USA
1997, 35mm, Color, 93 min.

Director: Ramin Niami
Producers: Ramin Niami, Karen Robson
Executive Producers: Paula Brancata, Das Werk
Cinematographer: Igor Sunara
Editors: Ramin Niami, Elizabeth Gazzara
Screenwriters: Ramin Niami, Patrick Dylan
Music: John Cale
Principal Cast: Sandra Bernhard, Robert John Burke, Bai Ling, Peter Stormare, Ornella Muti, Paul Anthony Stewart

Somewhere in tbe City is a noir screwball comedy about the denizens of a New York City tenement. The six residents have little in common except perhaps the pursuit of love, happiness, success and, of course, sex. Marta is a beautiful diva whose unhappy marriage to the sexist, racist, beerguzzling building super has driven her into the arms of Frankie, a small-time thief. Lulu is a gorgeous Asian student whose sights are set on a green card. Lulu's secret admirer is Che, a twentysomething revolutionary film student whose utopian vision and radical social agenda are wildly out of sync with the Gen-Xers he has recruited. Graham is a gay Shakespearean actor whose midlife crisis, slick agent, and obsessive hunt for meaty movie roles plague him on a daily basis. Rounding out the group is Betty, a gangly, unlucky-in-love therapist (at the first session depicted, it seems she's the patient) who somehow anchors the old brownstone where all the film's characters live. Together, these six wildly divergent personalities follow their own loopy paths to Somewhere's comic apotheosis.