The House of Yes

A few days I flashed back to the '90s writing about Ed Burns. Well, Parker Posey was also a mainstay of indie films that decade. There was a joke that once she was in every film that the Angelika, a Greenwich Village art house, was screening. I don't think that's true, but it might have been possible.

She had several indies in the '90s, including The House of Yes, directed by Mark Waters. Even at only 85 minutes, it was tedious to sit through. Based on a play, it doesn't open up the film much (the entire set is one house during a hurricane) and tries so hard to be quirky that it comes off as aggressively obnoxious.

Posey plays Jackie O, so called because of her obsession with Jackie Kennedy. Her twin brother, with whom she has an unnatural attachment (Josh Hamilton) is returning home with his fiancee (Tori Spelling). Posey is, to put it bluntly, insane, and her mother (Genvieve Bujold) is not particularly interested in treating her, simply letting her have her way. Their younger brother (Freddie Prinze Jr) is a simpleton who falls in love with Spelling.

Hamilton wants to be a normal person, but Posey has a hold on him. Meanwhile Spelling is like one of those characters in an Addams Family episode that gets more and more horrified the more she learns about them.

Posey really works hard in this film, but really got on my nerves. She's crazy and dangerous and rude and I think we are supposed to find her somewhat charming, but I didn't. I suppose Spelling is the audience's way into the film, but she's so bland that that becomes impossible.

Posey has continued to work in indies and TV, including becoming part of Christopher Guest's ensemble for his faux documentaries, but she only made one leap into the land of blockbusters--her role in Superman Returns. I suppose that film's lackluster response was enough to keep her doing smaller films.

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