Director/co-writer/music composer/lead actor Vincent Gallo zeroes in on the desperate, dysfunctional heart at the center of most romantic comedies in this meticulously made indie flick.
He also breaks most of the rules. The leading man (Gallo himself) is an obnoxious thirtysomething ex-con who’s never had a girlfriend. The woman (17 year old Christina Ricci) is a big-eyed blank slate, young, needy, full-breasted and submissive. Their “meet cute” scene culminates in a kidnapping. That these two children-in-adult-bodies should fall for each other is pure fantasy fulfillment of being loved for your worst flaws and it would be a flamingly awful movie in the hands of a lesser director. But Gallo REALLY cares. This is his big first auteur thunderbolr (according to Ricci, Gallo was a terror on the set and I believe her). Each frame is a tidy statement on the characters, their relationships to each other and their uneasy relationships to the world around them, ready to be dissected. Gallo gets in his arthouse pauses, French New Wave tricks and busy master shots to beautiful effect. Check out the OZU license plate on Ricci’s shitty old car for homage to one of Gallo’s inspirations.
Though the story may be pure La-La Land stuff, the setting is extra realistic. It’s the most shabby side of Buffalo, New York, though it could be any uncool place in the USA, with its rundown neighborhoods, sad streets, used cars, cheap motels, bowling alleys and mundane donut shops (I’d be surprised if any of this was shot on a studio set). It’s the kind of setting where a person might could use a little love, even when it comes from a strange place.