tribeca.jpgWith Metro, director Adolfo Doring (a music video director, and cinematographer for Capturing the Friedmans) has done a very good job of making a crew of very shallow characters look very hot; his film is, sadly, just as attractive and just as deep. A kind interpreter of Metro would call it a fashion portfolio come to life; someone less interested in kindness might suggest that the film seems to exist for no other reason than as an artifact proving its maker is good at talking to really beautiful girls.

Metro follows a gaggle of women from various walks of life as they navigate the semi-mean streets of contemporary New York City. Tina is a Midwestern-bred, tantrum prone supermodel; judging by her physique and behavoir, she is apparently somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve. She meets Amber, a stylist who takes polaroids of Japanese snack packs in her spare time, at a photo shoot. An Asian girl, whose name I didn't catch if it was thrown out, accosts Tina and Amber while they're walking down a Soho street and asks Tina for an autograph; when we catch up on her later, it seems that she spends most of her time smoking cigarettes, listening to rock music, and masturbating to Tina's picture. Speaking of, Lila is making a masturbatory documentary about a whole other cadre of girls, and their thoughts about "the evils of television". Anke is German and naive; Lila asks her to be in the film. Another broad is editing the film. Her name is Tia. Not to be confused with the model, Tina. Not that either character is developed to a point where confusing the two would make any difference.

And that's that: a bunch of pretty broads with mundane lives and jobs who look pretty whilst living their lives and doing their jobs. The Festival notes on the film are full of phrases like "rigorously observational" and "without a trace of artificiality" – none of which ring true. There's nothing particularly rigorous at all about Metro, *except* for its artificiality. Which is another way of saying that each shot is absolutely gorgeous, but clearly staged; the apparent prosumer video on which the images have been recorded has been manipulated into over-saturated oblivion. It is, for sure, the best looking video I've seen on screen in some time. But that doesn't absolve the problem that it's a chore to sit through – I checked my watch after 90 minutes had passed, and it turned out we were only 20 minutes in – or that it seems to function at about the same level of social critique as America's Next Top Model. And, actually, in terms of rigorous observation, I think it says it all that Tyra's brainchild has Doring's film beat.