He could be speaking for Sprecher’s other key characters as well. A physics professor, Walker (John Turturro), remarks to the wife (Amy Irving) he is cheating on with a sultry literature professor (Barbara Sukowa) that he wants what everybody wants: “To experience life, to wake up enthused, to be happy.” “13 Conversations” is composed of four loosely connected vignettes involving everyday New Yorkers. After its completion, the two started work on “13 Conversations.” Triggered by Sprecher’s desire to consider the traumatic incidents she had experienced and their resolution, they decided to explore the often calamitous consequences of seemingly inconsequential or random events. Sprecher, who had been a production coordinator and manager and a line producer on studio and independent features, made her directorial debut with the 1997 film “Clockwatchers,” about a group of office temps, which she wrote with her sister Karen. “That smile just broke the spell,” Sprecher recalled. As tears started welling in her eyes, Sprecher thought to herself, “I hate people,” only to discover a fellow passenger offering her a kindly smile. The following year, a complete stranger came up to her on a subway train and inexplicably slapped her on the head. In the early 1990s, aspiring filmmaker Jill Sprecher suffered a severe head injury from a mugging. Above all, it has an overwhelming sense of reality atypical of the American cinema. Tautly written, resolutely low-key, intricately constructed and very serious about the risky business of being alive, “13 Conversations” demands the utmost concentration, for to look away from the screen for even a brief moment is to risk losing a plot line or a crucial bit of information, but its cumulative, transporting impact makes it worth the effort. “13 Conversations About One Thing” is about as far removed from a Hollywood movie as a film can be and still have familiar stars and a traditional narrative form-albeit with some deft shifts back and forth in time.
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