Living Out Loud is a 1998 comedy-drama film written and directed by Richard LaGravenese and set in New York City, starring Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito, Queen Latifah, Martin Donovan, and Elias Koteas. The film is based (loosely) on two short stories by Anton Chekhov.
After being unceremoniously dumped by her husband, 40-something divorcée Judith Moore (Holly Hunter) tries to make sense of her new existence. She becomes friends with Pat Francato (Danny DeVito), the elevator operator in her high-rise apartment building, who is having marital problems of his own. She also dabbles in a new romance with an attractive masseur (Eddie Cibrian), and lets loose in a nightclub ruled by a torch singer, Liz Bailey (Queen Latifah), with whom she soon connects.
Living Out Loud received mixed reviews from critics, as the film holds a 59% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 34 reviews.
Tropes:
- Dream Sequence: Judith has numerous such sequences throughout the film, though less so as she becomes more assertive, having only one in the final act of the film.
- Happy-Ending Massage: It is implied (though not actually shown) that Judith receives this from the masseur she found through a newspaper ad.
- The Heckler: Judith does this to a singer at Liz's nightclub on open mic night.
- Inner Monologue: Judith throughout the movie, though it becomes less and less pronounced as her character grows, vanishing completely by the last act.
- The Oner: Judith's dream sequence where she jumps out of her apartment's window only to coincidentally lands on her ex-husband's new fiancee required Holly Hunter to get out of bed, jump out a "window" on set, run around behind the camera as it slowly panned back towards the bed, and be back in the bed showing no signs of having moved.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Pat loses his daughter off-screen. His dropping a picture of her at work is the inciting incident for his friendship with Judith.
- Spontaneous Choreography: In one of Judith's dream sequences, this happens to the tune of Brownstone's "If You Love Me" on the dance floor of a lesbian nightclub. The scene ends with Judith dancing one-on-one with the younger version of herself from a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flashback during the massage scene from earlier in the film.
