Just Looking(1999)

One night, Lenny (Ryan Merriman) winds up spending a few hours hanging out with Hedy (Gretchen Mol) and talking deeply about several things that are of interest to them both while also drinking a Rheingold beer with her (though she makes sure that his beer is heavily watered down), and by the time he goes home, he feels that he has fallen in love with her. The following day, he talks about his evening with Hedy with the “Sex Club” (consisting of Johnny [Joseph Franquinha], Barbara [Allie Spiro-Winn], and Alice [Amy Braverman]), and he soon tells them that he no longer wants to watch Hedy have sex with someone, having developed too much respect for her.

That night, while Lenny is playing gin with his aunt, Norma (Ilana Levine), and a bad rainstorm is going on outside, she suddenly goes into labor. She tells Lenny to call his uncle Phil (Peter Onorati) at his store, since he told her that he would be working late there dealing with paperwork, but when Lenny tries to use the phone, he discovers that it has no dial tone. After letting Norma know about this, she yells for him to get on his bicycle and go out and get Phil. Lenny thus heads outside and gets on Johnny’s bicycle (since his is busted) and pedals off towards his uncle’s store, but he soon rolls over some broken glass from a tipped-over trash can, which punctures the front tire and results in him getting thrown to the ground and sustaining cuts on the palms of his hands. This also causes the bicycle’s front wheel to get damaged and render the whole thing unusable. Lenny becomes unsure of what to do next until he notices a Rheingold beer bottle sticking out amongst the trash, which reminds him of Hedy and the fact that she is a nurse, so he immediately runs to her house to get help from her. He gets inside using a spare key that she keeps hidden under one of her flower pots in front of her house, but as he looks around for her, he goes into her bedroom and catches her in the middle of having sex with someone. Initially awestruck that he had accomplished his summer goal to “witness an act of love” (watch two people have sex), the moment is quickly destroyed when he finds out that the person she is sleeping with is Phil. Shocked and hurt, he screams out Phil’s name.

Off-screen, Phil returns home with Hedy and Lenny and gets Norma into his car, and Norma gives birth to a girl while she, Phil, and Hedy are en route to the hospital. The next morning, Lenny wakes up in bed and finds out via a note that Phil left for him that the baby is a girl, but he is still angry with Phil over what he caught him doing. We then see Lenny packing up his stuff, and Phil comes into his room to talk to him. He lets Lenny know that he owes him a big favor for what he did to help Norma, and he makes an honest vow to pay him back one day. Phil then tries to talk to Lenny about what he saw him do with Hedy last night, but he has trouble explaining himself, and Lenny is in no real mood to hear it. Phil ultimately tries to justify his actions by telling Lenny that, while he does love Norma, he had an urge that night that needed satisfying, and what he did with Hedy was just meaningless sex. However, Lenny angrily tells him that he was being unfaithful to Norma, and the fact that he did what he did while she was giving birth to their daughter makes it even worse. Phil yells that everyone screws around, including Lenny’s father, and though Lenny initially thinks that he is referring to Mort (Richard V. Licata), he soon realizes that Phil is actually talking about his deceased biological father, Sid. He starts asking Phil about what Sid did, but Phil flat out refuses to divulge anything, afraid of what his mother, Sylvia (Patti LuPone), might do to him if he reveals what he knows to Lenny. However, that changes when Lenny tells him that he is collecting on that favor right now. Phil proceeds to explain that Sid had an affair five years ago, and he got the other woman pregnant, but he paid for her to get it aborted. However, she wound up getting very angry with him about something, so she approached Sylvia and revealed to her that Sid was sleeping with her behind her back, which led to Sylvia kicking Sid out of their home. After staying in Arizona for a while (he told Lenny that he had to go there because of his asthma), Sid managed to talk Sylvia into letting him return home, but he and Sylvia never slept in the same bed again for the rest of his life. Lenny asks Phil if his mother still loved his father, but Phil replies that he doubts it, considering how quickly she wed Mort after his death. Phil then asks Lenny to not bring any of this up to Sylvia when she comes by later today to see the baby, and Lenny informs him that he has decided that, when she goes home, he will be going home with her. Off-screen, Phil gets Lenny’s hands bandaged up.

When Sylvia and Mort stop by later on, Lenny has a private chat with Mort and brings up that he knows about his father’s extramarital affair, which Mort reveals he knows about as well. He tells Lenny that Sid was a good man who made one mistake in his entire life and paid for it until the day he died, and Sylvia took Sid back for him (Lenny), not for her. He also assures Lenny that he has not strayed on Sylvia himself because he is “all talk” when it comes to other women and he would never put Sylvia through any more pain. Lenny replies that he clearly didn’t mind HIS pain too much because he kicked him out of his home for the summer, but Mort explains that he and Sylvia sent him out here to stay with his uncle and aunt because: 1) The three of them needed time to adjust to their new family situation, and 2) Given Lenny’s new interests in love and sex, he figured that Lenny might learn a few things by spending time with a pregnant woman and an “Italian stud.” Lenny sincerely thanks him for that and tells him that he actually did learn a lot, and Mort replies that he learned something himself as well: He doesn’t want to be his father because Sid was his father, and neither he nor anyone else can ever replace him. However, he does want to be his friend. He explains to Lenny that he is an honest man who loves Sylvia and will always be there for her, and if he lets him, he will be there for him, too. Lenny agrees to that arrangement, putting whatever dislike he held towards Mort behind him, and Mort then gives him a book written by two doctors about sex and other related matters so that he can be properly educated on it all.

Lenny is then seen hanging out with Johnny, Barbara, and Alice one last time, and when Johnny remarks how, now that Norma has given birth, Phil will be able to start having sex with her again, Lenny launches into a long monologue where he both stuns and impresses his friends by showing off all of the sexual knowledge that he gained from reading the book that Mort gave him. Later, after saying his goodbyes to Johnny and Barbara, Lenny gets a moment alone with Alice, and after they agree to hang out sometime in the future without Johnny and Barbara, they share their first kiss together. Lenny then pays one last visit to Hedy, and after Hedy apologizes for what he saw the night before, he lets her know that he will always like her, and they share a hug. Hedy then remarks that she wanted to get him a gift before he left, and she asks him if there is anything that he would like to have.

In the next scene, Lenny joins Sylvia and Mort in their car for the return drive to the Bronx, but before they go, Lenny narrates about how his friends in the Bronx will surely believe most of his stories about what he got up to in Queens over the summer, but knows that they will want proof when he tells them about how he spent a night drinking beer with a beautiful woman who models bras. As he narrates this, he unveils to the camera what Hedy had given him that will serve as that proof: A framed photograph of her modeling a bra, which she has personally autographed to him.