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New York wasteland, insomniac snapshot. "Well, I have my dreams while I'm awake." A spectral metropolis, underpopulated, dilapidated, possibly in the aftermath of a war. Through it wanders the vaguely troubled beanpole (Chris Parker), "a certain kind of tourist." A gangling figure passing through vacant spaces, entranced by a yo-yo in a dirty alleyway, spinning to a jazz record while his girlfriend smokes and gazes out the window. The clerk at the theater snacks counter sort of remembers the plot of Ray's The Savage Innocents, and there's The Lusty Men for the rubble of the lad's place of birth. The older generation lies in the psychiatric ward, the young one lives in a "kind of creeping dread," the musique concrète of unseen helicopters and clanging bells envelops all. "I don't expect it to explain all that much, but what's a story anyway, except one of those connect-the-dots drawings that in the end forms a picture of something." Jim Jarmusch out of film school and into the indie void, learning the difference between making a film about boredom and making a boring film. Hepcats, vagrants and schizophrenics, captured in 16mm fuzz, serenaded by John Lurie's saxophone. Reading Lautréamont wearies the protagonist, Baudelaire's Paris ("Spleen") might be his next stop. Hazy moods and fleeting interactions, just enough energy to steal a convertible and bid farewell to a squalid apartment. "That dude was wild style!" The closing shot clinches the debt to Akerman's News from Home. With Leila Gastil, Ruth Bolton, Sara Driver, María Duval, Frankie Faison, Lisa Rosen, and Eric Mitchell.
--- Fernando F. Croce |