Movie review: ‘Weiner’ tracks congressman’s second sexting downfall

In 2011, seven-term Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner’s underwear selfies, emblems of a sex farce not intended for wide release, accidentally went viral. There went a bright political future. And then a reprieve: Improbably, once the Weiner scandal became yesterday’s whoopsie-daisy, the man got his second act, an initially promising run at the New York City mayoral race.

The impish train-wreck documentary “Weiner” focuses on the ins, outs and lessons of that 2013 race and of the further sexting revelations that dog him still. “I did the things,” Weiner says of his compulsive sexual behavior. “But I did a lot of other things too.”

The movie bearing Weiner’s name, co-directed by former Weiner aide Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, pays lip service to those other things. In interviews, the directors have spoken of their desire to “get past the punch line version” of Weiner and of the junk that launched a thousand quips. They’re not wholly successful. Several aspects of “Weiner,” from Jeff Beal’s sardonic music (interpolating, among other cues, the theme from “S.W.A.T.”) to the shock-cut editing strategies, nudge the movie toward entertaining if facile mockery mixed with just enough empathy to prevent curdling.

It’s pretty irresistible viewing, though, which is a pretty sad thing to concede.

Launching his mayoral campaign, the disgraced former U.S. representative allowed Kriegman and Steinberg near-total access. In the wake of the initial scandal, Weiner plainly had a lot to sort out with his wife, longtime Hillary Clinton aide and confidante Huma Abedin. (Abedin currently serves as vice chairwoman of Clinton’s presidential campaign.) As Weiner’s ongoing sexting habits come to light, and the mayoral campaign coverage becomes about little else, the look on Abedin’s subtly crestfallen face poses two questions. One: Why is my husband like this? Two: Why has he consented to make this documentary?

At one point in “Weiner,” co-director Kriegman himself asks his newly disgraced subject, “Why have you let me film this?” As with the recent Amy Winehouse documentary “Amy,” the movie itself makes a compelling if rather hypocritical argument against relentless self-documentation of a life, however it’s lived.

Clearly, the man whose online persona carried the name “Carlos Danger” found himself in the grip of some sort of sexual addiction, or at least lousy impulse control coupled with a terrible sense of how not to keep one-to-one misjudgments private on social media. Many of the film’s most telling details are nonverbal. When Weiner’s campaign communications director Barbara Morgan contends with the latest round of bad press, her face goes past Buster Keaton into heretofore-unexplored realms of stoic duty.

My favorite testy exchange between Weiner and Abedin takes place in an elevator before the latest public appearance. “I don’t like those pants,” she tells her husband. Pause. The camera’s there, as always, implicitly begging for a rejoinder. Weiner complies. “Yeah, well,” he mutters. “We all have our cross to bear.”