The Music of Regret

The first part puts two families of puppets at odds over a job promotion; the second features Meryl Streep in romantic duets with a dummy (who is voiced by Adam Guettel); the third shows the legged objects, embodied by the Alvin Ailey 2 company, taking the stage to audition for their roles. With no movie technique (but a great cameraman, Ed Lachman), Simmons has assembled her interests as if in a toy chest: old movies and TV commercials, Broadway songs, good-to-feel-bad bathos, and the effluvia of domestic life.
　　Whether intentionally or not, Simmons has made a film about the inevitable post-Warhol art-world nexus of irony, finance, and glamour, a luxury object of empty intentions that the viewer fills with his own need for art, just as the second act’s real-world woman endows a dummy with her romantic hopes and dreams.