Based on Puccini's classic opera La bohème, Jonathan Larson's revolutionary rock opera Rent tells the story of a group of Bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent in the gritty background of New York's East Village. "Measuring their lives in love", these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic.
One of the longest-running shows on Broadway, Rent was the winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Obie Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, four Tony Awards and three Drama Desk awards.
Special Agent Matti
Rent is a post-modern collage of a lifestyle that exists in a world no-one with the internet can imagine. (The bohemian, romantic, starving artist suffering for their art, dying of some horrible disease, falling in love with all the wrong people is an attractive icon - to a romantic - but does little for people out in the real world.) The film is like looking through a shattered looking glass: disjointed, confusing, surreal. The story is a bit dated, too. The worst part is that the best song (Seasons of love) is not part of the story.
Still, if you're a starving, romantic, bohemian artist you'll manage to feel morbidly happy.
M (Moderate drug themes, infrequent coarse language)
135 minutes (2:15 hours)
Film: 2 March 2006
