Leigh and Cumming are Sally and Joe, an acclaimed (but not Oscar-winning) actress and a novelist who's about to direct the film version of his latest book. The party ostensibly celebrates their sixth anniversary, but in reality, we learn, they're recently reunited after an estrangement. (That's called foreshadowing, and it means that by the end of the film the two of them are going to be standing on a hillside shouting at each other.)

The arrival of each new guest signals a further complication of the interpersonal relationships. There's the gawky ingénue (Gwyneth Paltrow) whom Joe has cast in his movie over Sally's objections; the neighbors who were invited as a peace offering over a domestic squabble; the director who's struggling to extract something usable from Sally's most recent performance. Someone brings enough ecstasy to go around, and pretty soon everyone's popping the little pills and acting like high-schoolers.

The breeziness of the whole affair keeps it aloft for some time. Some of the dialogue is sharp, and the performances are relaxed in a way that I found very comforting. Even the cinematography isn't as uniformly crappy as I would have expected from a film shot on video -- scenes with low key lighting actually register fairly inky blacks and rich colors, while a goofy underwater sequence featuring John C. Reilly choreographing a couple of topless mermaids (Jane Adams and Parker Posey) is in luminous shades of blue. But eventually, things turn "serious," and the script can't support its own weight long enough for the performers to get anything across.

The Hollywood milieu also becomes a liability. All the while, I felt like I was simultaneously watching a metamovie that's about Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh and their desire to make a film with their actor friends. I couldn't help thinking about real-world relationships -- Posey was in Josie and the Pussycats with Cumming, who was in Cabaret with Leigh, who starred in Fast Times at Ridgemont High with Phoebe Cates ...

For me, The Anniversary Party is reminiscent of Woody Allen movies, in that the subject of Allen's movies always seems to be, on some level, Allen himself. By the same token, it's hard to watch Sally growing more and more insecure on the screen without wondering if the character written by Leigh the writer is a surrogate for Leigh the actress. It doesn't help that all of this is held together by the thinnest of story threads, relying on relationships between characters who are barely fleshed out. Finally, the film seems perched uncomfortably between self-deprecation and narcissism.

Theatrical aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Screened at UA Union Square, New York, NY