An improbable but still arresting downward-mobility story by the writer-director Matthew Tabak. Also released under the title "Auggie Rose."

Jeff Goldblum plays the successful go-getter insurance salesman John Nolan who seems to be happy with his station in life although on the home front his relationship with his girlfriend could benefit from an emotional upgrade. The spark and the juice is simply not there.

Then one night he visits a liquor store for vintage wine and there is a holdup. In the pandemonium, the store clerk Auggie Rose gets shot dead while fetching John Nolan the wine that he wanted.

The rest of the film is a long descent (or, "ascent" according to Matt Tabak) from the level of a successful but unhappy middle-class salesman to that of a "wise loser" who solves the riddle of life by becoming a store clerk working for minimum wage. Ahh, don't you wish cracking life's nut was that easy?

What happens is, while nosing around to find a little bit more about the life of the murdered clerk Auggie Rose, John Nolan is carried away by his search when he meets Lucy, the girlfriend that Rose has corresponded with while he was in prison. Anne Heche plays Lucy with such warmth and unabashed vulnerability that we understand John Nolan when he cannot turn down the opportunity to say who really is. Instead, he decides to impersonate Auggie Rose.

John Nolan dances around his false identity as best as he could just to be with Lucy until it becomes unbearable to sustain the weight of the accumulated lies. When the whole edifice comes down crushing, not only his present life as the fake Auggie Rose but his old life as a well-to-do salesman is blown to dust as well. But at least he has found the "hidden key" to an "examined life." John Nolan passes through that old Socratic test by chucking away everything that 99% of the people alive today would give an arm and a leg to acquire.

The ending is happy, sort of, although it leaves you with a bad premonition about the futures of these two lovers who have found the truth but lost their bank accounts.

A very improbable story that still vibrates with the excitement of a 2-hour long social suicide.

And if you would like to see the source of inspiration for the set designer who designed Auggie Rose's spartan apartment unit (down to the bird in a cage), please watch Alain Delon's film noir "The Samurai (1967)."