Casual Relations

A vampire movie, a skin flick, a murder mystery, a structuralist film, and a soap opera all blend together in Rappaport's debut film, Casual Relations. The film's narrative is intentionally ambiguous, jumping from one sequence to the next without providing clear connections between the various stories. Despite this, the characters' casual relationships with their environment are both droll and melancholic. The film features a diverse cast, including a woman who ignores her ringing phone, a TV-obsessed woman, two former lovers on a wordless drive, a man trying to pick up another at a disaster footage screening, a skin flick actress, and a man fixated on a photograph of the ocean. Shot over a year and a half, Casual Relations showcases the creativity of DIY filmmaking and the 1970s New York underground film scene.