Denise Calls Up (1995)

Denise Calls Up (1995)

An inventive, shorter-than-average independent romantic comedy. In fact, it is noted in many places that the film lasts 1 hour and 20 minutes. In reality, it lasts 1 hour and 13 minutes… not counting the opening and closing credits.

DENISE CALLS UP follows a group of young workaholic professionals who limit their social lives and interactions to telephone conversations. Thanks to a strong cast, DENISE CALLS UP is an intelligent and funny examination of love in the 1990s, as well as all the hassles of modern life at the time.

When I saw this film, I must have been in high school. I probably didn’t love it… but I was far from thinking that this movie would have such an impact on me. It didn’t haunt me, but it definitely obsessed me. And today, I think it’s crazy how avant-garde some people are, including certain artists, directors, musicians, and writers.

I’m thinking in particular of The Blow Monkeys’ music video “It Pays To Belong,” where you saw lots of people, including the band members, on their phones, and this was in 1988! I know that if we go back even further, we even find one or more black-and-white films that already predicted this. These creators often say that they simply observed society and imagined the dystopia that it would become. In other words: how will society evolve if it continues on this path!

Yes, I am also referring, of course, to George Orwell and his “1984” and “Animal Farm,” William Golding and his “Lord of the Flies,” as well as Ray Bradbury and his “Fahrenheit 451.”

Denise Calls Up is certainly first and foremost a comedy. But it is also tragic and strikingly true to life. I was left with nothing but a bitter taste in my mouth at the end. I find it all truly dramatic and utterly frightening.

Another frightening and dramatic thing is that someone seeing this film for the first time today would not even see what is so extraordinary about it. They would even say that it is distressingly banal and boring. Should I conclude that avant-garde stories become so outdated once the milestone has been passed? Once the predicted era has arrived?

Of course, phones and computers have evolved considerably, but here we are showing people who have things that didn’t even exist yet. In 1995, the internet had certainly been around for a while in the military… but not among civilians. How long does it take for one to reach the other? Thirty years? Twenty years? Less? Obviously, it’s a well-kept secret!

There are three scenes that really struck me: the birth, the accident, and the last scene.

A true tragicomedy with dialogues like:
“Gail is dead.

• Oh my God, that’s horrible! … Who is Gail?
• The one who introduced me to Barbara. We haven’t had a chance to meet yet… but it’s okay.”

There’s also: “Oh… Sorry… Did I wake you up? You can go back to sleep!!!” which made me laugh at the time.

“Why is there no romance anymore?”
It just goes to show… some things never change. We think that times have changed radically. It often seems to me that the protagonists, the actors, change, but that events and human reactions don’t evolve that much.

For a very long time, people have been saying things like, “Oh dear! These young people are lazy and do nothing but silly things! I don’t know what their future will be like…”
The fact is that these young people in question regularly end up doing well, but this makes the person criticizing them forget that they were also young once and that their own parents must have thought the same thing about them. It’s a kind of hereditary wound. “I was hurt, so I have to hurt others too.” Consciously or unconsciously. And this kind of phrase has been around for centuries.

It’s quite unsettling to watch this film again thirty years later, even though it has never really left me. However, I was afraid I wouldn’t like it this time around. My heart tells me to give it top marks, but my head reminds me that it does have its longueurs and that not everything about it is perfect. If I put this film among the masterpieces, where would I place films such as American Beauty (1999), Seven (1995), Jacob’s Ladder (1990), The Life of David Gale (2003), Gremlins (1984), The Dark Crystal (1982), Alien (1979), The Big Lebowski (1998), Finding Neverland (2003), or Benny & Joon (1993)? I can’t say I’m disappointed, but I would have liked it to be even better. It’s sometimes hard for me to be satisfied with little.

One thing that surprised me is that I still don’t know any of the actors in this film… except for Liev Schreiber! It didn’t have the same effect on me as Flatliners (1990). When that film came out, I only knew Julia Roberts! Today, I know exactly who the other four are: Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, and Oliver Platt. But the actors and actresses in Denise Calls Up are either not very well known, have only appeared in independent films, or have never really made it big.

Yet some of them have quite an impressive filmography! In any case, the actress who plays Denise is fabulous. Alanna Ubach also apparently starred in Renaissance Man (1994), which I really liked, and in the hilarious Sister Act 2 (1993).

In this film, Denise is pregnant. In real life, Alanna had to wait until 2017 to actually give birth… to a son!

As for Liev Schreiber, not only is he an actor, but he also directed Everything is Illuminated, which starred Elijah Wood. He’s been around the block a few times. He starred in The 5th Wave (2016) alongside Chloë Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe, and Maria Bello. He is in the excellent Spotlight (2015) in a formidable cast that includes Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Stanley Tucci. He made an impression on superhero fans by playing Victor Creed, aka Sabretooth, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). He also appeared in the slasher film Scream 3 (2000). He is the lead actor in the series Ray Donovan. In short!

I’m quite surprised to see how many covers this film has! It’s as if they didn’t know how to sell it, how to make it appealing. There are covers where you only see Denise, or Denise in the middle with everyone else around her talking on the phone. There’s also a close-up of an old rotary phone, with photos of each character inserted into the holes on the dial, again with Alanna Ubach in the foreground.

Well, then there are also photos and posters featuring Caroleen Feeney. She’s the only one who gets naked in the film, so naturally there are covers where she’s in the center of everyone else. For example, there’s one that shows each actor in a circle of phone booths with Caroleen sitting on the bottom one, in lingerie, with a big smile. And the worst part is that it gets more and more exaggerated: you can also find her lying on her bed, almost naked, on the phone, on the left side of the image, and see Denise on the right… without a single other character in sight! And I’ll finish by mentioning the cover that shows Feeney twice: once (apparently licking the receiver!) among the three characters whose faces are shown in close-up, and once at the bottom of the image in her skimpy outfit in a suggestive pose. Note that she is looking straight ahead in the close-up photo, while Timothy Daly is looking to her left and Alanna Ubach to her right… which gives the impression of a certain complicity in all these glances.

It is obvious that if you (over)emphasize the sexuality of a film in order to attract a certain category of viewers, they will inevitably be disappointed. Failing to deliver on promises can be fatal for a work of art.

Caroleen Feeney (Escape from L.A., Bad Manners, Chow Bella, The Citizen, Avalanche, Max) has appeared in at least three films directed by Hal Salwen (such as His & Hers, for example), two of which starred Liev Schreiber. The two must get along pretty well!

At the end of the credits, we read: “This film is dedicated to the memory of my father, who died far too young.”

To conclude:

As you will have understood, these portraits of single New Yorkers in the spirit of the 90s, who live and communicate only by telephone, fax, and computer, from their bathrooms when they wake up until the moment they fall asleep, thinking of their loved ones, are rather sad. Depending on our sensibilities, we may find this touching or, on the contrary, terribly annoying and pathetic. But where does this irritability come from? It’s high time to ask ourselves some questions when we look in the mirror. And that’s no small task…

Warning: Spoilers Alert!!!

Six young New Yorkers now only communicate with each other by phone and answering machine. Planned dates are constantly falling through because they are forgotten or canceled due to a supposed lack of time. On the phone, however, the protagonists learn the most intimate details about each other and share their needs, neuroses, and secrets. Frank and Barbara even fall in love and have sex for the first time over the phone. One day, Denise intervenes and tells Martin that she is expecting his child thanks to his sperm donation. The whole gang joins in on the conference call.

Earlier, I wrote, “There are three scenes that really stood out to me: the birth, the accident, and the last scene.” That’s not entirely accurate! In fact, everything got mixed up in my head.

1) The accident scene: I had in my mind a man who was driving and had an accident while leaving a message on an answering machine… when in fact it was a woman… who was actually calling another woman! I thought the person who had the accident was the one receiving the message!

These false memories are completely crazy. It’s really fascinating… just like the subject of this film!

2) The childbirth scene, yes: I saw it as just as crazy… but the fact that it was Liev Schreiber who fell to his knees at that moment only doubled my pleasure!

3) The last scene… actually, I only half remembered it. I had completely forgotten that Denise was there too, among the others. Just as I had forgotten that it ended, despite everything, on a positive note and with a beautiful glimmer of hope.