Simpatico (1999)
A Film Essay by Mark O'Hara
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Mathew Warchus's Simpatico is a realistic story of long-term guilt, deflected love, and puzzling role-reversal. Unfortunately, it's also an exercise in ennui for the viewer.
Based on the play by Sam Shepard, Simpatico starts by showing us the remains of the old friendship between Lyle Carter (Jeff Bridges) and Vinnie (Nick Nolte). Vinnie calls Carter from a pay phone outside a Payless grocery store in California. Carter, a millionaire horse breeder in Kentucky, drops his business and tells one of his secretaries to inform his wife he's leaving on important business. While this plot is unfolding we view shots from twenty-odd years ago, of a young Vinnie and Carter celebrating a winner at the track. We come to understand that it was this time of youth that generated the mistake the men are still regretting. What we do know is that it involves photographs and their negatives, and that Vinnie offers to give them to Carter if Carter agrees to talk with Vinnie's girlfriend.
According to Vinnie, this woman (Cecilia, played by Catherine Keener) has filed harassment charges against him, and Carter's chore is to reason with her in an attempt to get the charges dropped. This story is one of many lies, though, and while Carter is inside Cecilia'a apartment, Vinnie steals Carter's car and all of his things. For some reason Carter has left his wallet in his car, but he does have his cell phone.
What follows is a story replete with the ramifications and wrong turns caused by youthful stupidity and middle-aged guilt. In Kentucky, Vinnie visits the victim of the youthful scam, one Mr. Simms, whose name is now Ames (Albert Finney). Meanwhile, Carter stays in Vinnie's hovel; the best explanation we have that Carter doesn't fly back to his wife and mansion and soon-to-be-sold Triple Crown winner is that he likes the smell of alfalfa. He grew up in this area of California, and apparently decides to forsake the life of lies he has led. Carter even dresses in Vinnie's clothes and visits the seedy bar Vinnie frequents. It is an interesting switching of lives, though not quite plausible.
What happens with Cecilia? It seems her relationship with Vinnie was only platonic anyway, but she ends up as Carter's agent, taking a lot of money to Simms/Ames in return for the negatives. Later we meet Rosie (Sharon Stone), Carter's wife, who wonders why her husband isn't back home to celebrate the $30 million sale of Simpatico. The staff of Carter's horse farm goes along with Carter's whim, covering for him, but what's a little shaky is that Carter seems serious in not returning to Kentucky. There's an interesting scene between Vinnie and Rosie before Vinnie returns to California to find Carter, his doppelganger, crashed on the couch in a drunken heap.
What's very weird is that there is no actual scene between Carter and Rosie; we see them talking on the phone and we see them as youths in the flashbacks. Further, Vinnie and Cecilia never share a frame. It is interesting, though, how we learn about them through their talk with others; but it is not very helpful in coaxing the viewers' sympathy.
The excellent cast all do a fine job. Nolte has played this type of freeloader once too frequently, perhaps, but he is quite proficient. It's fascinating trying to figure out his motivations. Bridges also acts smoothly, though we are still not given adequate reason to believe he would forfeit his lifestyle so completely. The surprise find here is Catherine Keener as the somewhat reserved Cecilia. She acts off Bridges particularly well, stopping short of alarm at his odd antics. Albert Finney is the only character to play himself in the flashbacks (the young Vinnie is Shawn Hatosy, the young Carter Liam Waite, the young Rosie Kimberly Williams). As such, Finney does not visually convince us; and although he is among the very finest living actors, Finney's style is too inflated for the seedy tracer of equine bloodlines. His Simms/Ames is lustful yet not quite despicable.
Mathew Warchus also penned the screenplay, and it seems at times that Shepard's lines still belong on the stage. Some of the delivery is too portentous for the movies; it's as if we need the in-person medium of live drama for the material to resonate properly. The editing moves quickly enough through most of the narrative, and the flashbacks are nicely introduced - at times the older characters melt into their younger selves and we realize without obtrusive devices where we are. But the flatness near the end results in a lack of satisfaction.
Simpatico is not a major work in the canon of modern film, but it is a strong study of the damage wrought by hidden secrets -- a theme not uncommon in the work of the actor/playwright Sam Shepard. The film is rated R for language and glimpses of sordid sexuality.
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