SHORT TAKES '92
Here's this year's edition of films I've seen, but don't have a lot to say about. Of the nine films discussed here, two are decent, and two are interesting failures; the rest are just crap.
One of the good ones is Alison Anders' GAS FOOD LODGING. Adapting Richard Peck's novel "Don't Look and it won't Hurt," Anders tells the tale of Nora (Brooke Adams), a fortysomething waitress at a truck stop in New Mexico, and her two daughters. Trudi (Ione Skye) is the older, rebellious daughter, who sleeps with a lot of men, and becomes pregnant by one of them. Shade (Fairuza Balk), who narrates the film, is the peacekeeper between mother and daughter, and must deal not only with her own sexual awakening, but also tries to find her father (James Brolin). Anders tends to let things wander a bit (then again, at a trailer park, there's not much to do except let things wander), but there's no denying she understands these characters, being a single mom herself. Most directors would stack the deck between Nora and Trudi, but Anders allows us to see both sides. It helps also that she's got a trio of great actors here. Adams and Skyre have always been underused, and they show here why they deserve more roles, and Balk continues to fulfill the promise she showed in films like THE OUTSIDE CHANCE OF MAXIMILIAN GLICK and VALMONT.
UTZ is the English language debut of director George Sluizer (THE VANISHING). It's about the title character (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a baron who lives in then-communist Czechoslovokia and collects porcelain figures. The story is told in flashbacks, as Marius Fisher (Peter Riegert), a rival collector who became friends with Utz, comes to the now free country to try and find out what happened to his collection after he died. It seems Utz was able to leave whenever he wanted to buy the figures, but couldn't leave with his collection, so he chose to stay in his home. The structure of the film is interesting, as are the performances. In addition to the always reliable Mueller-Stahl, and a relatively subdued Riegert, there's also good work from Paul Scofield as an anti-communist professor who's friends with Utz, and Brenda Fricker as Utz's maid. What keeps this from fully engaging us is Sluizer seems more interested in the construction of his story than the telling of it, which is too bad, since obsessives like the Baron and Fisher are always interesting characters.
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