Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Genre: Comedy
MPAA Rating: PG
Director: Louis Malle
Theatrical Release: N/A
Home Video Release: N/A
Cast: Andre Gregory, Brooke Smith, George Gaynes, Julianne Moore, Jerry Mayer, Wallace Shawn
Published ID: 5551
UPC: 043396749870,

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Plot: In the late 1980s, noted theatrical director Andre Gregory assembled a group of friends and actors and began rehearsing a new translation of Anton Chekhov's {+Uncle Vanya} by David Mamet, not with any specific performance in mind but as a way of exploring the beauty and precise construction of Chekhov's play. Louis Malle, a friend of Gregory's, became interested in the project and spent two weeks filming Gregory's actors as they performed {+Uncle Vanya} without an audience in a run-down theater near New York's Times Square. In these performances, the line between theater and real life is blurred as conversations between actors -- juggling take-out cups of coffee and wearing street clothes -- slowly grow into a superb performance of Chekhov's classic, with Wallace Shawn as Vanya, Julianne Moore as Yelena, Brooke Smith as Sonya, and Larry Pine as Dr. Astrov. With a certain sad irony, this marvelously realized adaptation of a play about people wondering what they've done with their lives proved to be Louis Malle's final film; he died of cancer in 1995. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide