Writer/director Amos Kollek and actress Anna Levine have teamed up to make two pretty downbeat films (Sue and Fiona) that have each won awards at the Cannes Film Festival.  Their latest project, Fast Food, Fast Women, is decidedly more upbeat and plays like a romantic Big Apple fairytale.  It's sweet, quite often funny, and is even a bit reminiscent of a Woody Allen comedy, although Women's characters exist a few rungs further down the social ladder than the usual denizens of Woody's New York.

Women begins with a scene that features a woman lying down in the crosswalk of a busy intersection.  She's almost run over, and explains to the baffled driver, "I'm just trying to put some excitement in my Sunday."  The woman is Bella (Levine, Water Drops on Burning Rocks), a rail-thin waitress who has abandoned a lucrative career on Wall Street to wait tables at a Manhattan diner.  With a biological clock ticking as loud as an air horn, she's obsessed with her upcoming birthday (the big 3-5) and worried that the 12-year affair she's been having with a married man (Austin Pendleton, Oz) might not ever lead her down the aisle.

Bella's mother (Judith Roberts) is intent on fixing her daughter up with more suitable men, and her latest blind date offering is Bruno (Jamie Harris, son of Richard), a struggling novelist who pays the bills by driving a cab.  They hit it off, but in an attempt to not frighten him off, Bella lies and tells Bruno that she doesn't like kids.  This is unfortunate, as Bruno's ex-wife has just run off to Tibet with her yoga instructor and dumped their two kids on his doorstep.

In the meantime, a group of retired men who frequent Bella's diner discuss their own love lives (or complete lack thereof).  Paul (Robert Modica) is pretty depressed and tries his luck with the personal ads, where he finds Emily (Louise Lasser, Requiem For a Dream), a horny widow who starts talking about marriage after just one date.  Seymour (Victor Argo, The Yards), on the other hand, shoots for the opposite side of the age spectrum and begins to stalk an overeducated peep show dancer (Valerie Geffner).  Throw in a stuttering Polish hooker (Angelica Torn, daughter of Rip Torn and Geraldine Page), and you've got yourself an eclectic tale of lonely eccentrics.

The stories cross in unusual and unexpected ways, a credit to Kollek's writing style.  His direction is unassuming, leaving his actors to do their thing, which they do quite well here.  There are a bunch of good one-liners and some pretty funny visuals, like two women talking about gravity's effect on breasts as they squeeze melons at the supermarket.  Women, which was one of the few American films selected to compete at Cannes, should appeal to most viewers, but especially to those entrenched in their mid 30s.

1:35 –

for nudity, adult language and mild violence