LEAVING LAS VEGAS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: A prostitute and an alcoholic have a
relationship in the short time while the alcoholic
intentionally drinks himself to death. The story
is downbeat, but it is also a moving study of the
both love and self-destruction. There is more than
a little of the George/Lenny relationship of OF
MICE AND MEN in this story. Stand-out performances
by Nicholas Cage and Elizabeth Shue make this one
of the better films this year. Rating: low +3 (-4
to +4)
LEAVING LAS VEGAS is about people on the margins of society. That has been done before in films like BARFLY, but it perhaps has never been done as well as in this film.
Ben Sanderson (Nicholas Cage) has gone from being a film executive who drinks too much to a drunk who cannot do anything for a living or even to save his own life. Alcohol has replaced his wife, his son, and now his job. So he has decided to treat his alcoholism as a fatal disease, has literally burned the remnant of his previous life behind him, and has gone to Las Vegas to die in a spree of drinking and possibly some high living. Almost immediately on arriving he runs into (almost literally) prostitute Sera (Elisabeth Shue). When he sees her again he hires her but chooses to just talk, telling her his plan to drink himself to death. Seeing that he needs care and desperately needing someone to care about she strikes up a relationship, overlooking his indifference. The one ground rule they set is that neither will try to reform the other. In a year with many films about relationships, this is one of the most unique. At times they relate as lovers, friends, mother and child, prostitute and pimp, nurse and dying patient. Rare is the film where we see so many aspects of a relationship, or so many different sorts of love. Why Sera is even interested in the heartache of falling in love with a man committing slow-motion suicide is the enigma at the heart of this film.
Stylistically the film is well-handled although perhaps a bit slow-paced for some viewers, though those viewers would be unlikely to come to this film in any case. One false style move is to have Sera's character developed by having her open her heart to her analyst. It is becoming too easy and too much a cliche to have people in disreputable professions able to open up only to their analysts like the prostitute in KLUTE and the hired killer in DIARY OF A HIT MAN. One indulgence director Mike Figgis allows himself is cameo roles with familiar people. It is something of a tribute to this film but also a distraction that people like Bob Rafelson and Lou Rawls would agree to do cameos. Julian Sand also is present in a small role as Sera's bizarre Latvian pimp.
This is a film that does not pull its punches about the lives of either prostitutes or terminal alcoholics. The dialogue is often raunchy and watching Cage's character deteriorate is not an uplifting experience. This is an adult film both in the usual sense and for the fact it is aimed at a thinking, mature audience. I put off seeing it for a long time because this is just not the kind of film I generally want to see. In spite of that I was impressed sufficiently that it will inevitably be on my top ten of the year list, probably high. I give it a low +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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