Opera No. 1 (1994)

• 70%
• 1994
• Comedy
• Drama
• Music
• Hal Hartley
• Patricia Dunnock
• Parker Posey
• Adrienne Shelly

Two charming but inept agents of the supernatural (sort of like cupid goddesses) decide to interfere in human affairs. Mini Musical Comedy. Like one of those Shakespeare situation comedies in the woods. Or the Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour." A mini-opera with some sort of dense but ultimately meaningless plot. There's a young man who works too much and who needs to fall in love and a young woman in similar straits on the far side of the forest. The goddesses split up and attempt to cast spells on the mortals. But one of them, while casting a spell calculated to make the man fall in love with the first girl he sees, bungles the job. He falls wildly in love with her instead. She tries to escape but he steals her roller blades, without which she cannot return to the spirit world. Lot's of running around, mistaken identities, everyone gets lost, some arias, later... The goddesses do somehow manage to bring the two overworked mortals crashing into one another's arms and to retrieve the supernatural roller blades. We'll figure that out later.