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"Back on the map. Again," the city that welcomes dreamers with a tin pachyderm, not quite Ganesh. The gal from Saskatchewan (Susan Sarandon) works at the casino's oyster bar, studies French, hopes to graduate to the croupier's table. Her estranged husband (Robert Joy) is "a training poster for the narc squad," her pregnant kid sister (Hollis McLaren) is "almost a qualified therapist." A stash of cocaine ends one small-timer's life and rejuvenates another's, namely the graying numbers runner (Burt Lancaster) who used to work for the gangsters of old. He tends to the querulous underworld widow (Kate Reid) but longs for the heroine, his neighbor, just the mistress for a white-suited relic on a winning streak. "Hey, Pops, what planet did you come from, huh?" A fairy tale filmed on crumbling locations, in other words Louis Malle's America, strange and violent and enchanted. (John Guare's piquancy with dialogue buttresses the outsider's vantage point, as it did for Forman in Taking Off.) The attaining of wisdom, as distinct from knowledge, spread across various perspectives. Bellini and Robert Goulet illustrate the limberness of the tessitura, "life will be peaches and cream." The ocean viewed from the boardwalk is a gray haze, not what it used to be, sighs the autumnal lion elated to be able to bite again. Chase on the automated parking lot, escape with a little help from the toll-booth lady. Lancaster's dapper dignity, Reid's rendition of a kinder Baby Jane, Michel Piccoli's dry comedy as the suavely domineering pit boss. "Too wholesome for me." Neruda lemons, Monte Carlo aspirations, getaway wheels for "the chaste goddess worshiping the moon." A happy ending for the specters, the wrecking ball cannot touch the resplendent geezer strolling down the promenade. Tarantino's Jackie Brown is a spiritual heir. With Al Waxman, Moses Znaimer, Angus MacInnes, Sean Sullivan, Norma Dell'Agnese, and Wallace Shawn.
--- Fernando F. Croce |