Played Out

Booda is a rapper struggling to live the hip hop lifestyle and promote his new tracks while dealing with parental and spousal responsibilities; Leslie is a single mom trying to find the right way to tell her teenage son she’s quit her job. James (who is in a rock band with Leslie) is trying to juggle eating cold pasta and getting high, with getting home in time to celebrate his kid sister’s birthday. A day in the life of these quintessential Madisonians forms the loose-limbed, shaggy dog structure of James Runde’s deliciously off-handed and self-assured first feature. If John Cassavetes and Richard Linklater had joined forces and tried to capture the young and restless souls inhabiting Madison’s music scene, they would have been lucky to evince performances as lived-in, and atmospheres as quietly melancholic as Runde does here.