A drama that morphs into a psychodrama, then morphs again, this time into a...well, I'm not quite sure what it winds up as, but I'll say this for Sorry, Haters, it goes its own way. Robin Wright Penn, just as fearless as her husband, Sean, plays a New York City woman who was knocked off her rocker by 9/11. Or by the aftermath of 9/11. Or by the fact that, like it or not, things have not returned to normal. The brains behind a "Cribs"-like show on an MTV-like channel, Penn's Phoebe exudes creative-class hustle and bustle. She knows how to work a phone. But if you look closely at that tightly drawn smile, seemingly controlled by an on-and-off switch, you'll notice that there's a screw missing. And another one's come loose. One lonely night, Phoebe takes a cab all the way out to a New Jersey suburb and, after a family's gone inside, scrapes a message on their van with a rock. Ex-husband? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
On the way back to Manhattan, she strikes up a conversation with the cabbie, a Syrian immigrant named Ashade (Abdellatif Kechiche), and it turns out the movie's about the two of them - a pushy career woman and a devout Muslim. Ashade's brother has been deported to Syria, where he will almost certainly be tortured, perhaps killed, and Phoebe offers to make a few calls on his behalf. But she also attaches herself to Ashade in a way that makes sense neither to him nor to us. And we begin to wonder exactly who she is and exactly what she's up to. And what about Ashade? Is he everything he's cut out to be? Weird at first, then absurd, then downright preposterous, Sorry, Haters will try the patience of those who like an easy-to-follow storyline. But if you can suspend disbelief long enough, the movie just might take you someplace you haven't been before, deep down into a bottomless well of loneliness.
