I just saw the movie and right now it feels like one of my top all time favorites. As in up there with Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and 400 Blows and La Dolce Vita. I don't know why ten fragments of stories should have that power. Maybe because the writing is genius? No pandering to conventional standards of entertainment, just a great author mining vein after vein of truth and freeing his brilliant actors to be intensely fearlessly human at every second. This is the movie that Crash wishes it was (and I thought Crash was awesome). No preaching. No "ideas." Just the human heart on display. Amazing that a woman lying in a hospital bed facing a mastectomy got the biggest laughs--because Kathy Baker, speaking Rodrigo Garcia's lines, so completely captured the frustration and helplessness that all of us have felt that all the audience could do was laugh in recognition. Go see this one.
Review of Nine Lives
