Taglines: Nick is leaving. Beth is staying. Carol is waiting. Sid is painting.
Bodies, Rest and Motion movie storyline. Nick is a feckless television salesman who gets fired and impulsively decides that he and his girlfriend, Beth, will move to Butte, MT, which he’s read is “the city of the future.” “I read that a while ago, so the future should be there by now,” he enthuses. He waits until the last moment to tell Carol, his ex and Beth’s best friend, about the move.
While Nick is working his last day, Sid comes to the couple’s house to paint it for the next tenants. He quickly develops an interest in Beth. He, Beth, and Carol get stoned and hang out. When Sid hears about the move, he tells Beth that he’s never left Enfield, and has no interest in traveling. Meanwhile, Nick decides to take off on his own. When Beth gets word of this from Carol, she finds solace in Sid’s arms. Sid proclaims his love the next morning, and implores Beth to stay. Meanwhile, Nick visits his childhood home, looking for his parents, has an epiphany, and decides to return to Carol.
Bodies, Rest & Motion is a 1993 American drama film written by Roger Hedden based on his play, and directed by Michael Steinberg. The film stars Phoebe Cates, Bridget Fonda, Tim Roth, and Eric Stoltz: they play four friends who are interested in the relationships they have and changing their own lives, but along the way their interests in life and each other start to change. The film also stars Bridget Fonda’s real life father, Peter Fonda, as a motorcyclist. Bodies, Rest & Motion was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
Janet Maslin called the characters played by the four central actors “quirky, magnetic”, saying they are set against the backdrop of a “bland, artificial culture winning its war with nature”; the film is “much too studiedly hip to indulge in a happy ending, but in its wry, offbeat way it does inch forward. In this jaded context, a small step in the right direction is indeed a large step for mankind.”
According to People, the film “wants desperately to say something profound about the condition of twentysomethings. But it succeeds only in sounding like outtakes from an undergrad bull session. While Fonda and Cates manage to keep their footing, Roth elicits no emotion beyond irritation, and Stoltz acts as if he’s had his nose in the latex too long.”
Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, saying it is “one of those movies that not only comes accompanied by supporting materials, but seems fairly pointless unless you brief yourself”; according to Ebert, if the viewer knows Newton’s first law of motion and keeps in mind that “‘Generation X’ is a media buzzword for the late-twentysomethings [who have been] so named, apparently, for their lack of an identity”, it is “possible to watch Bodies, Rest and Motion, and find that it makes a statement about its generation.
Bodies, Rest and Motion movie trailer.
Bodies, Rest and Motion (1993)
Directed by: Michael Steinberg
Starring: Phoebe Cates, Bridget Fonda, Tim Roth, Eric Stoltz, Alicia Witt, Sandra Ellis Lafferty, Sidney Dawson, Jon Proudstar, Kezbah Weidner, Amaryllis Borrego
Screenplay by: Roger Hedden
Production Design by: Stephen McCabe
Cinematography by: Bernd Heinl
Film Editing by: Jay Cassidy
Costume Design by: Isis Mussenden
Set Decoration by: Helen Britten
Art Direction by: Daniel Talpers
Music by: Michael Convertino
MPAA Rating: R for language and sexuality.
Distributed by: Fine Line Features
Release Date: April 9, 1993
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