When Will I Be Loved
Neve Campbell is an arresting enigma inWhen Will I Be Loved, one of writer-director James Toback's most mysterious and successful minimalist dramas about sex, deception, and mutable identities in New York City. Campbell plays twentysomething beauty Vera, whose nude shower scene during the film's opening credits looks more like mythic preparation for a soon-to-be-fateful day than brazen exploitation. Ensconced in a fantastic loft paid for by her parents (Barry Primus, Karen Allen), the unemployed Vera embarks on an odyssey that begins with a mutually deceitful job interview with a college professor (Toback), leads to misadventures in questionable perception in Central Park, and climaxes with Vera's successful manipulation of two powerful men, one a craven lover (Fred Weller) and the other an Italian billionaire (Dominic Chianese) trying to get her in bed for a lot of money. Provocative as a good urban legend, the film sticks with one for a long time.--Tom Keogh