Once-slighted Gretchen Mol just splendid in `Just Looking'

Movie review

XX 1/2 "Just Looking," with Ryan Merriman, Gretchen Mol, Joseph Franquinha, Peter Onorati, Amy Braverman. Directed by Jason Alexander, from a script by Marshall Karp. 97 minutes. Varsity. "R" - Restricted because of strong sexuality, nudity and language.

Gretchen Mol played Marion Davies in "Cradle Will Rock," Matt Damon's girlfriend in "Rounders," and the woman fated to marry Jude Law in "Music From Another Room." Joseph Fiennes and Ray Liotta fought over her in Paul Schrader's "Forever Mine," a potboiling Telluride Film Festival entry that goes straight to the Starz Channel at 8 p.m. Sunday.

She's also appeared in a couple of Woody Allen films, yet to date she's made almost no impression, and some reviewers have been merciless in their criticism of her. That could change with the delayed release of "Just Looking," a minor, sex-obsessed 1999 comedy in which she plays Hedy, a Monroe-like object of desire. For once, she steals the picture.

Marshall Karp's autobiographical script is set in New York in 1955. Mol seems to have stepped out of a magazine from the period. Indeed, her character once modeled for bra ads, and she's like a walking sexual fantasy for Lenny (Ryan Merriman), a 14-year-old Bronx peeping Tom who wants to "witness an act of love" before his summer vacation is over.

"Just Looking" isn't only a title. It becomes the movie's justification for Lenny's frequent acts of voyeurism, which include spying on his widowed Jewish mother (Patti Lupone) and her obnoxious new husband (Richard V. Licata) while they're having sex. When the boy gets caught in the act, he's sent away to his pregnant aunt (Ilana Levine) and Italian-American uncle (Peter Onarati) in suburban Queens, where Lenny starts working in his uncle's store.

There he runs into Hedy, a night nurse having problems with her lover (John Bolger). Lenny also befriends John (Joseph Franquinha), who is part of a Queens "sex club" with two girls (Amy Braverman, Allie Spiro-Winn). The club is all talk, no action, and some of the talk is amusingly misinformed.

"Everything I see reminds me of sex," says Lenny, whose raging hormones drive the plot. The single-minded motivation gets a little tiring, especially as the characters' rough edges get polished off in a warm-and-fuzzy sitcom resolution that assures us that, for all his peeping tendencies, Lenny will grow up to be as bland as everyone else.

Merriman is a television veteran ("The Pretender," "Smart House"); he's smooth and funny without suggesting any of the insecurities of adolescence. Braverman is somewhat more successful on this score; the movie might have benefited from more scenes with her.

But it's Mol who makes the most indelible impression. The director, Jason Alexander (George Costanza on "Seinfeld"), seems to have designed the movie as a valentine to her, and that's entirely appropriate. The story is essentially the grown-up Lenny's nostalgia-driven dream of her, and she makes the larger-than-life conceit work.