Showroom Classics: Singles + Intro 12A

From the archive

This film was last shown on 7 April 2024

In Seattle during the era of grunge music, the lives and relationships of a group of young people, all living in the same apartment building, go through a period of flux. Among them are waitress and aspiring architect Janet (Bridget Fonda), who finds herself obsessed with bad boy musician Cliff (Matt Dillon) and Linda (Kyra Sedgwick), an emotionally fragile environmentalist on the look-out for love; and Steve (Campbell Scott), a quintessential nice guy who studies traffic patterns.

A wonderful early-90s time capsule - rumoured to be a major inspiration for the TV show Friends - Crowe’s renowned love of the comedies of Billy Wilder is worn proudly on the film’s flannel shirt sleeve. Gorgeously written and undeniably sweet, Crowe’s writing is an undeniably charming and perfectly observed depiction of the uncertainties of dating and looking for love.

Featuring perhaps the greatest fictional band of all-time, Citizen Dick (and their Mudhoney-spoofing hit song, ‘Touch Me, I’m Dick’), the film also features cameos from members of Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains (as well as Tim Burton and Paul Giamatti), and unforgettable original songs from Paul Westerberg of The Replacements.

Singles is the perfect closing film for the OUR CINEMA COULD BE YOUR LIFE season as it acts as a loving tribute to the music, but the film can also be seen as part of a wider passing of the underground into the mainstream, foreshadowing a DIY scene that would eventually be irreversibly transformed and halted by corporate success.

This screening will feature an introduction by OUR CINEMA COULD BE YOUR LIFE season curator and Singles superfan, Ryan Finnigan.