After Dark My Sweet Directed by James Foley
A film review by Chris Loar
At first glance, Westerns don't seem to have much in common with films noir; they seem to occupy opposite ends of the genre-cinema spectrum. Westerns are all about wide open spaces, and are full of real heroes doing heroic things. Noir flicks are crammed into constrictive cityscapes, with depressed midlife men drinking too much whiskey and trying to decipher complex plots that sometimes even their writers don't completely understand. But, of course, this opposition is illusory; noir is the Western's illegitimate child, and the two genres have fertilized and influenced each other in countless ways. Most obviously, the best films in the two genres share the same ur-protagonist, a complex hero who is at once sinner and saint. He is often a mysterious stranger, or at least an outsider, entering situations of chaos and restoring a semblance of justice and order.
But I've never before seen a film that tried to merge these genres in quite the same way as James Foley's AFTER DARK, MY SWEET. For while this film -- and the Jim Thompson novel on which it's based -- has a fairly standard film noir plot, all intrigues and lies and ambiguous motives, it's got none of the standard visual cues that go along with that plot. Film noir relies on urban settings, sharp contrasts, chiaroscuro, and the flavor of night. AFTER DARK, despite its name, is first and foremost a movie of the desert and of daylight. Filmed in and around Indio, California, the movie is about agoraphobia, not claustrophobia, and uses emptiness and space rather than density and texture to make its visual points. It's this conspicuous use of the desert that makes us see the Western that lies beneath the surface of so many noirs and neo-noirs.
The story revolves around Kevin Collins (Jason Patric, looking hunky). Collins, or "Collie," has a pronounced nervous disorder which gives him an unusually sudden temper -- a temper which, combined with the skills of a former boxer, makes him a little bit dangerous. Which is why he's been in and out of institutions for a number of years. As the movie opens, we meet Collie on the run from one of these institutions. Bedraggled and tired, he's looking for a lift, and he finds it in the form of Fay Anderson (Rachel Ward), a recent widow who offers to let him do a few odd jobs around her home.
Fay is a classic noir enigma, a wasted, leggy beauty; not surprisingly, it's Collie's attraction to her that gets him involved in the machinations Fay's friend of Uncle Bud (Bruce Dern). Bud is a former detective, but he's clearly not on the side of truth and justice. Uncle Bud has a proposition for Collie, though, that might set him up for the rest of his life, or so he claims. He plans to kidnap a wealthy man's son -- and, with his inside connections to the police department, all he needs is the right man to help him along. Dern is perfect for this part; his performance is gloriously unctuous, and he carries himself with a seedy charisma that gives this film some much-needed energy.
The storyline is firmly grounded in Thompson's novel; much of the dialogue is culled more or less word for word. But the novel has a punchy energy that this film lacks; the novel ends up as a framework for Foley to do what he wants to do. And what he seems to want is to give us a noir that's really a sort of hollowed-out Western. Fay's cavernous house, where much of the film takes place, is missing a husband and father; Collie is missing a purpose in life; Uncle Bud is missing a few screws. And it's hard to do a film that's mostly about absence; it tends to hollow out the entire project, and indeed, this film is missing any real energy or drive. Which leaves us with a film that's more interesting to think about than it is to watch.
Compounding this difficulty is the presentation of Collie. In Thompson's novel, the reader is very much sucked into Collie's consciousness; he feels very authentic, and unlike many of Thompson's protagonists, he's almost entirely sympathetic. In the film, we're largely locked out of Collie's head; we hear his words as voice-over at times, but (partly but not entirely due to the intrinsic limitations of film) it's hard to identify with him. This problem is enhanced by Patric's performance. It's not that Patric is bad in the part; quite the opposite, he's surprisingly good -- convincing, enigmatic, complex. And that's part of the problem -- he plays things a little too complex, leaving the audience without a solid reference point. There's a lot going on behind those blue eyes of his -- but while Thompson let us know exactly what was there, Patric and Foley only provide hints and glimpses.
All of which leaves AFTER DARK as an admirable but not exactly compelling picture. It's certainly a lovely movie to watch (rather less so on video than on the big screen, of course); shots of the barren California deserts echo spacious interior shots that at times echo Orson Welles with their depth of focus and complex content. The performances range from good to excellent, and the writing is vintage Thompson. But when it's all said and done, it's really too airy and spacious to feel very substantial.
(c) 1998 by Chris Loar
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