Want to Feel Sorry for Another Rich, White, Privileged New Yorker? We've Got the Film For You!

Earlier this week I attended a screening of [Frost], the penultimate film of the [Gen-Art Film Festival](http://www.genartfilmfestival.com/2008/). I was seated next to some of the other filmmakers in the fest, one of whom was nice enough to offer me one of the free Stellas she'd picked up. She and the others admitted they were eager to see the sold-out film due to all the festival buzz surrounding it. Ugh. Kill the Buzz.

Turns out the film, which stars [Jason Behr], didn't deserve much attention, and must have been selected because it had a quasi-celebrity (I still can't shake the fact that Behr was a brooding alien in [Roswell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_(TV_series)), a show I never even watched) and seemed to speak to a generation in a what must be the preferred independent cinema clichés: self-destructive white boy; must be saved by wise-beyond-her-years pre-teen. But while Ryan Gosling could pull it off in Half Nelson—partly cuz he's so darn charming, and it was set in a working-class nabe—Behr's Jack Frost (really? Steve Clark and Thomas Moffett couldn't come up with a better name?) is a privileged guy living in a swank pad in the Upper East Side who doesn't have (or need) a job, has sex with crazy skinny models every day and also wrote a successful novel for the hell of it. Sound like an asshole? He is. His biggest problem is that the woman he's loved since he was a kid is finally deciding to get married and just wants to be friends with Jack.

But luckily his cute-as-a-button neighbor Sophie, an 11-year-old (played by [India Ennenga]) who looks a lot like the love of Jack's life when they were both budding youths, saves the day by hanging out with Jack, teaching him to appreciate life and rescuing him when he decides to ditch it all and escape on a boat with more beautiful models.

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHKKKKKKKKKK-K-K-K!!!!!!

Are you serious? Are we really meant to care about such a self-centered, privileged prick? I'm not saying there's never a reason to peer into the trivial lives of the rich and pampered, a la [Whit Stillman's oeuvre]. But where he actually offers a social critique at times, Clark and Moffett offer an earnest flick that never questions the fact that this guy doesn't have it rough in the least. New York is a series of gleaming offices, spacious apartments (replete with comic doorman) and chic parties. Give me a break. I don't think even the city's elite would have much pity for this guy.

By the end of the film, I was too stunned by the utter inanity of the film to soldier up much more than a wimpy "excuse me" so I could escape to the toilet. Then my friend and I decided to attend the after party for the film at the Bowery Hotel. The swanky digs didn't do much to bolster my confidence in New York's creative folk. Everyone was too happy to sip the free whiskey, rather than criticize the ridiculous film. I decided I couldn't take much more, so I took my indignation with me—leaving them to congratulate themselves on yet another frippery that should have never been made.