BUFFALO '66 (1998) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Director: Vincent Gallo Writers: Vincent Gallo and Alison Bagnall (story by Gallo) Starring: Vincent Gallo, Christina Ricci, Angelica Huston, Ben Gazzara, Kevin Corrigan, Mickey Rourke, Rosanna Arquette, Jan-Michael Vincent
For some odd reason, many filmmakers these days are stearing away from making what are commonly referred to as the "self-indulgent" films. The personal films of the 70s, where directors explored their own insecurities, fears, hang-ups, et. al. has all but disappeared, even from the independent and art house films, where they used to flourish. So when some director steps forth, who's not Woody Allen, and makes a film that's, well, self-indulgent, we all gasp at it, and some of us even go ahead and criticize it for being such a way. Not me, though.
"Buffalo '66" is a very self-indulgent film. It's director and co-writer, Vincent Gallo, has crafted a film that deals with his own hang-ups, and is done in an extremely personal way, as if we're living inside the mind of Gallo and being brought his own little insecurities and hang-ups without any filtration. We see scenes that go on for what seems like eternity. We take little side-steps and visit places that have nothing to do with the story, and occasionally a moment will pop up when something bizarre will happen and after awhile just stop. At one point, the lights dim and the entire film comes to a screeching hault so that one character can do a tap dance, as if it were straight out of a Marx Brothers movie where Harpo used to play his harp for no reason whatsoever. Why did he put this in? Don't ask me. But I kinda liked it.
As it's self-indulgent, "Buffalo '66" has a very improvisational feel to it. It's as if Gallo came up with an idea and then began to just stick with the first thoughts that came into his head. Gallo stars in the film as a man named Billy Brown, and when we first meet him, he's being released from a multi-year prison sentence. We wait with him a bit as he lays down on a bench, and frames are pasted on top of the surface frame, and we see glimpses of his prison life. He then gets up and asks if he can use the bathroom in the prison, but is coldly turned away. So goes the odyssey of finding a bathroom in Buffalo, New York.
Yes, the film picks up. It even adopts what could be called "a high concept" concept: Billy stumbled into a tap dancing place, and suddenly kidnaps a blond woman who's tapping there, Layla (Christina Ricci, who's battling Parker Posey for the title of "Queen of Indies" these days), and forces her to act as his wife when he goes home to meet his surburban parents, who have no clue he's been in prison at all. Unbelievably enough, she goes along with it, and as Billy's mom and dad (Angelica Huston and Ben Gazzara) have soon welcomed her into the family that never really accepted Billy.
But the film doesn't stop here, and we begin to slowly and sporadically learn a lot about Billy's past via unannounced flashbacks that first appear as superimposed scenes then take up the rest of the frame. We learn that Billy had a horrific childhood, that his mother was too obsessed with the Buffalo Bills to really care about him, and that his dad has a terrible short temper. In one frightening flashback, we see Billy's dad kill his puppy for peeing on the rug one too many times, and in one darkly comic flashback, we see his mother feed him chocolate when she should damn well know that he's allergic to it.
We also discover that Billy made a moronic bet on the Bills, and that his punishment was to go to prison for someone else at the request of his Bookie (Mickey Rourke, in a nice cameo). We also see that the film may result in a violent finale, one that it plays with dangerously, and it seems that the film, in the end, can go in two different directions, both which are contrived, but one that's at least satisfying.
What Gallo's film does that many self-indulgent films don't do is openly deal with it, and in the end, reach a level of contrivance that saves it from ultimately being whiny. The point, it seems, that Gallo is making here is that sometimes, we're so self-absorbed, so worrying about our little insecurities, such as what will our parents think of us, or how will I get my dignity back, that we often to realize that happiness is right at our fingertips. The film's true masterstroke is that character of Layla, who is hardly a realistic person but is more a fantasy for Billy. Ricci spends the majority of the movie with an expression of understanding and un-patronizing sympathy, and when she begins to become enthusiastic about helping Gallo, we only gradually notice that she's actually falling in love with him, for whatever reason it may be.
For Gallo, this is not so much a brilliantly-tuned autobiographical study, which is what is many critics' receptions, but really a very excellent debut, not to mention a very mature debut. He has all the flair of an original director, one which I'd be interested in following because he never lets anything get in the way of what he wants to do. He wants to have a scene where Layla tap dances in a bowling alley? Why not, let's put it in there. He wants to spend five minutes doing an unbroken scene in a photo booth between Billy and Layla? What the hell, run with it. And he wants to interupt scenes with flashbacks that explain what's going on when the audience should know it? Definitely.
I expect there will be more better things from Gallo in the future. He's built a tiny career out of working with really experimental and weird directors, everyone from Abel Ferrara to freaking Kiefer Sutherland, and now he joins their ranks with a debut that is a little shaky, but nevertheless extremely engrossing, saddening, and even smarter than the works of many of the directors he's worked with. And the reason for this is that he makes it his own. He puts his personal stamp on it, and doesn't care what anyone else will think when he goes totally unconventional on us. And the best thing is that he's distanced himself from his film, and made this a wonderful self-criticism that never becomes annoying or whiny. How's that for a concept?
MY RATING (out of 4): ***1/2
Homepage at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8335/
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews