* * * * (out of 4)
First Love, Last Rites is one of those movies where nothing happens, meaning it follows the rituals and mundane patterns of normal life. However, inside that nothing are a million small ripples of passion, confusion, acceptance of the way things are and frustration in how you wish things were.
Films like this feel more accessible to me, and I have an easier time relating to them than I do observing intergalactic battles or fistfights on the sides of airplanes. There's something more powerful in a minor epiphany than in a heavy handed message movie because it comes nearer to our own direct experience. It's like Mozart says in Amadeus: "Who would you rather spend your time with? Your hairdresser or Hercules?"
* * *
The late Jeff Buckley performed the haunting love ballad which opens this film; "I Want Someone Badly," about the profound confusion of first love. The first images we see are a young man and woman, naked, laying a mattress in front of an open window in the first days of a long, hot summer.
It will be a summer of fleeting epiphanies for Joey (Giovanni Ribisi), a kid from Brooklyn who somehow wound up in the swamps of Louisiana, living in delicious sin with Sissel (Natasha Gregson Wagner) in a small house bordering a river.
Joey seems like one of those guys just out of college, probably with a degree in liberal arts or philosophy, who doesn't know what to do or where to go with his life. Now he's in this mysterious and sensual no man's land - lazy days of sex and aimless walks through the nearby factory towns and fishing district.
It seems like young love, and there's a sassy chemistry between these lovers, but from the start it feels as though something horrible and paralyzing lurks under every word and gesture. There's something about the way Sissel walks and moves, the way she tells him he needs to keep that window closed despite the oppressive heat. Sissel also seems aware that he loves her more than she loves him, and that he'll only be interested in her if she remains an impenetrable mystery.
The subtle moments between Ribisi and Gregson Wagner play out beautifully, as though we were looking through a window at them without any trace of acting. There's something fascinating about watching an eccentric, unpredictable performer like Giovanni Ribisi, who projects an unforced intelligence and innocence which only enable him to realize his frustrations, but he plays the moments quietly, keeping his reserves of intensity in check in light of things he cannot hope to understand. Natasha Gregson Wagner also brings humor and warmth to a character who, in other hands, might have been little more than a spider weaving Joey into her web.
