CHEKOV ON A BENDER

Sideways ****

The fourth film by director Alexander Payne and his co-writer Jim Taylor, Sideways is in many ways the least ambitious of their collaborations. (Remember the abortion comedy Citizen Ruth? Or the use of four different narrators in Election?) But this simple road movie about two bachelors, one about to be married and one recently divorced, is so achingly and perfectly modulated that trying to pin down the source of its greatness is practically futile. Certainly the cast deserves a lot of credit. It wouldn't surprise me if you said Payne and Taylor had somehow remade some great undiscovered classic of 70s French cinema. (Didn't it star Gerard Depardieu? I think it was directed by Bertrand Blier.) That this would-be imagined remake doesn't suck is just another paradoxical miracle. Eschewing the desperate cleverness of his contemporaries, Payne has made a warm, funny film that isn't just for cultists--although for the record, Andrew Sarris loves it too. Great Brubeck inspired score by Rolfe Kent befits a film set in California wine country. Wonderful performances by Paul Giamatti, Thomas Hayden Church, Virginia Madsen, and Sandra Oh. (Why did Oh have to leave Canada to make films like this?)