A film in two parts: “Fiction” tells the tale of a curious college student and a disenchanting exchange with her celebrated professor; “Non-Fiction” offers a middle-class suburban family trapped in consumer hell, and the documentary filmmaker who turns his camera on them.

Dark comedies this dry and ballsy will always be an ‘acquired taste’, but yeah – this is absolutely a good movie. Put aside the fantastic performances by Selma Blair, John Goodman, Paul Giamatti, and Mark Webber and you’ll notice a painfully wry and acerbic look at how reality infringes upon the creative process…and vice versa. Solondz presents a clever irony in a scene involving Blair’s disaffected coed. After she tells a factual story about a brutal sexual experience, she is instantly met with a chorus of derision from her classmates. “Cliché!” they yell, never realizing that what they’re decrying as false is quite painfully true. Her torturously critical professor tells her truth doesn’t matter once you put pen to paper; everything after that is fiction.

The second story also takes a cock-eyed look at artist vs. subject when Giamatti’s character (a depressingly real loser, played wonderfully by this fine actor) finds himself admiring a family that anyone else would ridicule or detest. The family in question is one garish middle-class Jewish clan from New Jersey. Mom and Dad are repressed and unyielding, the three sons are a clattering cacophony of childhood angst, and the unappreciated maid is nearing the end of her rope. Simply put, they’re ugly, they’re unrealistic, and they’re exactly like millions of families out there. Solondz crafts the movie as a series of eavesdropping sessions. None of the normal movie rules apply, and that’s a good thing indeed. The unflinching and intermittently nasty style of humor in Storytelling (as well as the director’s earlier works, HAPPINESS and WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE) may jolt you out of the multiplex doldrums for a crisp 88 minutes, and that’s always a welcome diversion.

The movie is presented in your choice of Widescreen or Full Frame aspect ratios, while sound is delivered in 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround or Stereo Surround Sound. Subtitles are available in English and French.

Just the theatrical trailer here, but special attention should be given to one thing: New Line has wisely opted to include both the R and unrated versions of STORYTELLING. The only difference between the two is a big, dumb, unnecessary orange BLOCK that appears over top of the sex scene in Story one. I’m assuming that only adults would be interested in a movie like Storytelling anyway, and all adults should know what sex looks like by now. Down with censorship.

This is a witty, dark, and strangely satisfying experiment. It’s a little bit sad, a little bit sick, and a whole lot honest. The more dysfunctional you think your family was, the more you’ll enjoy this movie.