As I watched this, I thought it was funny, kind of. Strong hint on the kind of. Oh my god, the acting was terrible. It was so bad...which disappointed me, as Hal Hartley is big on the whole condition acting- using physical ailments to change how one acts. I've used his method while doing a monologue from Schindler's List and my teacher said it was one of the most powerful monologues done by a student that he's seen- and that was the first time he suggested a Hal Hartley method. So I was expecting Surviving Desire to have exquisite acting. And when Martin Donovan opened his mouth, and twisted his face into what was supposed to be a pained or deep or spaced out expression, I laughed out loud and my teacher glared at me. But man, he was absolutely Oscar winning compared to everybody else (save the woman who kept asking everyone to marry her- she wasn't too bad). While he and the girl had a lot of chemistry, it just didn't...work. I don't know what was missing. I think she was just too much of a hot shot for him.

And I know the story was trying to be deep but it just didn't get there for me. It seemed to be forcing it on me.

You either like Hal Hartley's specific, offbeat, deadpan brand of filmmaking, or you don't; me, I tend to like it more than not, but "Surviving Desire" is really more like a bridge between his full-length projects. It's a slight yet amusing exercise in wordplay and verbal one-upmanship. There is not much more to say about it, because that's pretty much it: 4-5 people playing word games for 54 minutes. Some of the lines are quite insightful, like one about why Donovan chooses not to believe in anything. **1/2 out of 4.

This movie is not for everyone; the illiterate and anyone who can't appreciate dialogue that sounds just as dead pan as it should aren't going to understand what's going on here at all. This movie takes a simple relationship, and, in a rather dead pan, witty manner, the characters go through the motions of a long term relationship in about a day. The dialogue is absolutely delicious, and the supporting characters are wonderful. The movie does a magnificent job of dissecting the personality of stereotypical people and relationships. Those who can appreciate the style will be rolling on the floor laughing.