Review of Hi, Mom! (1970) by Tanner B — 17 Jan 2013

"Hi, Mom!" starts with a building superintendent(Charles Durning) bending over backwards, literally not figuratively, to rent a lovely slum apartment to Jon Rubin(Robert De Niro) who accepts it in order to film the occupants of the apartment building across the way. Instead of going straight to the Museum of Modern Art with his footage, he goes to the first smut peddler(Allen Garfield) he comes across who seeing the pornographic possibilities decides to bankroll him despite the dubious legality, ethics and morality of the enterprise. While filming, Jon takes special notice of Judy Bishop(Jennifer Salt), always lonely, and decides to seduce her.

Like most of Brian De Palma's more recent films, "Hi, Mom!" wears the influence of other films on its sleeve, in this case the French New Wave(as do other films in the current 'New Yawk, New Wave' festival currently showing at the Film Forum, as other people have pointed out). But at least here, he takes the jump cuts and puts them to alternately hilarious and disturbing uses while telling an original story to deftly show how technology separates us, not brings us together, made still relevant today by the advent of the infernal cell phone while giving glimpses of a bygone New York City. For a while, this may feel like little more than elaborately devised skits but it all comes together toward the end in an increasingly provocative narrative.