For Your Consideration: 'Results'

Results, directed by Andrew Bujalski

Results, the new feature from independent filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, is likely to appeal to viewers looking for a romantic comedy, while not being in most ways a stereotypical romantic comedy. It belongs tangentially to the newish genre of independent romantic comedy known, for better or worse, as mumblecore. Its main characters, Trevor and Kat, are true believers in the gym and personal trainer culture, reminiscent in some ways of Linda and Chad in the Coen brothers' Burn after Reading, played by Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt. While Trevor and Kat are showing the bodily less fortunate how to make their lives perfect -- knees apart here, butt out there -- they are in some ways the least likely to understand themselves and what they want.

Trevor, played with smarmy honesty and (his own) Australian accent by Guy Pearce, owns a gym and life philosophy institute called Power 4 Life. The mantras he peddles are absurd, but he proffers them with the utmost seriousness, especially when the client has as much money as flab from which to be separated. He finds both in Kevin Corrigan's Danny, who walks into Trevor's gym in Austin, Texas, ready to spend a lot of money. Danny, we learn, has come into an unexpected inheritance and throws his money around, for example offering $200 for someone to come to his house to make his TV and cable box work together, or for another person to bring him a nice cat.

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Uncomfortable with being watched at the gym, Danny ends up having one of Trevor's personal trainers, the intense and sometimes unpredictable Kat, come to his house for personal sessions. Played by Cobie Smulders of the Avengers movies, Kat is physically toned to perfection but given to emotional binges. Nice supporting turns come from Giovanni Ribisi, as a hipster who turns out to be a lawyer, and Anthony Michael Hall of all people as the Russian fitness guru worshiped by Trevor. Bujalski's script is fresh and weird, rarely telegraphing where it is going, yet still feeling completely natural in the way it unfolds. The soundtrack, often consisting of on-set performances by live musicians, is a nod to Austin's music scene.

This film opens today at Landmark's E Street Cinema.