The Anniversary Party
Written and directed by Alan Cumming
and Jennifer Jason Leigh

As audiences, we allow our actors to play serial killers, Mafia dons, lawyers. We'll even let them play the president for a term or two. But should we let them play more actors? Or, while they're at it, actually direct themselves and their cute actor friends (also playing actors) in scenarios of their own devising? Certain professional guilds might draw the line at The Anniversary Party, which has the casual feel of a Hollywood Hills-colony artwork made in spare time; it was co-written by its stars, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming, with their favorite colleagues in mind for the ensemble cast. But grumps would be missing out on the fun; it's an experiment that goes right more often than not.

For starters, the story, about a gathering of hypersensitive movie folk who come rawly

An ecstatic evening with Gwyneth and Jennifer. PETER SOREL/FINE LINE FEAATURES

undone over the course of one wild night, is supercharged--adrenalized like live performance and executed with a leanness that can only be an actor's revenge for having to wait in trailers for hours. (Reportedly, the digital video shoot wrapped in 19 days. Take that, Dogme 95.) But it also veers, for the most part, away from the standard vanities of fame and sex, making for a more nuanced study of aging, children and money worries. When the emotional meltdowns arrive (and there's definitely one too many), we're still left with real people hurting, not just actors.

It's hard to imagine a more volatile duo intended to anchor a film than Leigh and Cumming, both scene stealers in their greatest moments of instability. (Leigh especially has carved a fearsome career out of junkies, prostitutes and the tragically simple-minded; Cumming threatened to unhinge the regal poise of Eyes Wide Shut with just a few minutes of screen time as a panting desk clerk.) Here, they've cast themselves as a bruised-but-hopeful married couple attempting a rebound from a year-long separation: "We're OK, aren't we?" "We're great."

Leigh is Sally Nash, a 30-something movie actress whose respected past has become a little too past. Cumming plays Joe Therrian, one of those bad-boy British novelists whose bestseller is being preened for a blockbuster, which he has been tapped to direct. Though his novel is explicitly based on their happier years, Joe is thrilled by the suggestive interest of Skye Davidson (Gwyneth Paltrow), a nubile, slightly spacy megastar whom he'd like to cast in the female lead, a role Sally expects for herself but is crushingly denied.

But no time for the pain: Guests are already knocking at the glass panels of the couple's airy Richard Neutra house for the kind of semi-public display of resiliency (with hors d'oeuvres) that only the extroverted could find cathartic. (One of the many things the film gets right is the way personal snubs are masked by a cold hyper-professionalism: "Delete that," is the repeated refrain after many a faux-pas.) Skye wafts in, as does their blowhard business manager (John Benjamin Hickey) and his insensitive wife (Parker Posey, perfect in this kind of thing), both concerned about their clients' grim finances. Then there's Sally's current director, Mac (John C. Reilly), who brings along some video dailies and quietly sneaks away to fret over Sally's awful performance, and his actress wife, Clair (the sublimely neurotic Jane Adams from Happiness, all bony elbows and pinched grins), a new mother desperately popping pills to keep in roles. (At one point, she's called a "wraith," though it's meant as a compliment.)

A thick-rimmed Peter Sellers look-alike (Michael Panes) shows up, as does a leather-clad photographer (Jennifer Beals), and it's here, when some retro-hip organ music is cranked and drinks are served over tart asides, that you might be pleasantly reminded of Lolita or some of Fellini's catty party scenes set to swinging "Patricia." For first-time directors, Leigh and Cumming have packed their setup with impressive combustibility; when the fireworks start to pop, they never let up: an aggressively mean game of charades, a wildly inappropriate toast by an aging leading man (Kevin Kline, spot-on in hambone mode), the unwrapping of Skye's heartfelt present to the couple--several tablets of ecstasy.

These people don't need drugs (neither does the film), and I would have been satisfied by two finishing turns in particular: Phoebe Cates' increasingly manic warnings to Sally about having children with the fickle Joe; and Mina Badie's coiled neighbor who desperately wants her litigious husband to go home so she can cut loose.

But epiphanies are doled out in Magnolia-size helpings, turning the endgame into more of a generous showcase for chops than something whole. (Worse, some are unmotivated intrusions--including that old hairy gag of the late-night phone call bearing bad news--a shame when other strands could have been further exploited.) Nonetheless, any film that ends on as modest a note as the dutiful signing of tax returns has more of a grounding in reality than these few missteps might suggest. These actors did all right.