Buffalo '66 - Vincent Gallo - 1998

Warming to the work of Vincent Gallo was something I never expected to find myself succumbing to. My early knowledge of him had been shaped by his self cultivated ‘enfant terrible’ of indie film image, his various rants on the state of cinema, his cameo roles in music video’s such as Glassjaw’s “Cosmopolitan Bloodloss” and his prominent features, a Brando cool overwhelmed by loathing and cynical Lower East Side hipster rat snark.

I was surprised then when I first watched one of his self directed efforts The Brown Bunny (2003) to find a minimal, wistful, malaise led road movie, the only hints of the Gallo i’d been previously privy to, were in the notorious ending featuring his then girlfriend Chloë Sevigny, and so I was led to finally seeing his directorial debut Buffalo 66, and you know what, it’s a good film, in fact on a repeat viewing, it’s actually a pretty great film.

Gallo is Billy, released from prison after 5 years (covering for someone else’s crime because of a large gambling debt); he has somehow convinced his parents that he has been working away on a ‘top secret assignment’ for the last 5 years. Upon arrival in his home town he makes the seemingly extreme decision to kidnap a woman Layla (Christina Ricci) to pose as his wife ‘Wendy’ and complete the delusion of his parents.

The Gallo I saw here on first viewing was the detestable narcissist I had previously envisaged, it was only on a second viewing that this early part of the film began to fit within the scope of the rest of the picture for me. Gallo comes running out of the blocks full of impotent rage. The film after opening with his release from his stretch; spends the next 15 minutes upon his arrival in Buffalo, on a Kafka like futile search for an open toilet facility, an increasingly comical scenario that concludes with an odd homophobic attack/rant. This scene at first just makes us think “typical asshole Gallo” and has been much derided in reviews of the film, but on subsequent viewings I see it more as a release for all the pent up anger, fear and torment that an opening montage showed us that he suffered during his prison term.

Gallo’s hometown of Buffalo is presented as Nowhere U.S.A. A cold post-industrial dystopia, a land of permanent late winter, where the sun never shows from behind the gunmetal cloud cover and a perfectly suitable location for matching the palate of the early 70’s cinema that the fine cinematography recalls, there are echoes of the Boston of Peter Yates’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1974) and the eastern seaboard journey of Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail (1973). The city is painted as a landscape of broken dreams and beer stained dollar bills, where the local football team offer the only outlet of passion for the malcontent residents, and it’s this football team (specifically the 1966 Buffalo team of the title and a later incarnation discussed shortly) that prove pivotal in shaping Billy’s livid existence.

We finally meet Billy’s parents, perfectly embodied by Angelica Houston and Ben Gazarra (whose presence makes the viewer no doubt intentionally think of Cassavettes). Dad is a failed crooner, and a short tempered puppy killer, Mom couldn’t care less about Billy’s wellbeing, thinking only of her beloved Buffalo Bills. A well edited scene has Mom state how she wishes she’d never had Billy (due to missing a vital Super Bowl winning game) whilst the commentator of the game playing in the background states “he’ll have to live with that the rest of his life”. This 20 minute centre piece of the film helps us begin to understand Billy’s relentless rage, before meeting his parents, he hilariously makes Layla/Wendy observe his ridiculously specific demands for pleasing them, he clearly craves their approval, he craves for love, but during an increasingly ill tempered meal, the image of his ‘family’ life disintegrates.

We find that Billy’s other motivation for returning to Buffalo, has become a twisted revenge mission on a Scott Woods, the spot kicker who he blames for losing him the bet that left him in hock to the local dons, of course this bet was placed on the Buffalo Bills, the team casting a permanent shadow over his life.

Before he can get around to enacting this revenge though, he and Layla stumble through several downtrodden Buffalo locations together, the bowling alley (in which we receive a wonderful musical interlude courtesy of King Crimson, a shoestring Busby Berkeley number gone prog-rock that somehow fits with the films verisimilitude), a greasy spoon cafe, a 2 dollar photo booth, and finally a makeshift motel room, throughout these scenes Billy continues to rant, rave, demand, all whilst Wendy patiently expresses her love for him, we gradually strip away at the layers of his damage, we find out about his youthful crush on the real Wendy (embodied by Rosanna Arquette as a small town bloodsucker) and his longing to be wanted, finally he breaks, is he truly being offered the love he has never known, could he, Billy Brown actually be loved?

The finale takes us to a showdown with Scott Woods in a strip bar of the gold lamé and swinging tassels variety where Billy must decide between love or annihilation, the scene builds like a low budget Fellini bacchanal, a sweaty grand guignol of gross caricatures.  Billy draws his pistol, his decision is made...

The closing scene proves to be the one that truly won me over, Billy has made his choice and enters a doughnut shop, buzzing with the realisation he has discovered what love feels like, he has a newfound empathy, everyone is his friend, there is a powdered wide eyed rush to his speech, he is imbued with generosity, pure unfiltered happiness, the euphoric joy that comes with knowing you’ve found someone, not just someone, the one! You get me? Everyone deserves a shot at that feeling, even little asshole Billy, he’s in love and we are overwhelmed with happiness for him, what happened? End credits.

Crash - David Cronenberg - 1996

David Cronenberg adapting the work of J.G. Ballard was always a combination that made a lot of sense. If you look at Cronenberg’s debut Shivers (1975), the similarities between that and the same years High-Rise by Ballard are unmistakable. Thematically they both choose to represent technology as the next logical step in human evolution, often presenting worlds where the human body morphs with machinery in a transgressive creation of a ‘new flesh’. A world where sexuality is usually represented as a bourgeois bating series of perversions and is censor worryingly often presented as a consistent partner to violence. Therefore it goes without saying that Crash will unsettle many viewers, and it did of course suffer a campaign of attempted censorship in the UK by that bastion of wholesome goodness and righteous indignation that is the hateful rag The Daily Mail.

The film follows one James Ballard (played by everyone’s favourite cinematic sexual deviant Mr. James Spader) as he and his wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger carrying the look of a haunted femme fatale accidentally transported into the 1990’s) find that their sexual relationship has descended into an emotionless series of extramarital affairs, tales of which they regale each other with in an attempt to bring some excitement back into their relationship. This world is changed when James is involved in a major car crash, in which the husband of Dr. Helen Remington (an unusual casting for Holly Hunter) is killed. James forms a tentative relationship with Remington which sees them becoming increasingly involved with a car crash fetishist cult led by Vaughan (The much underused Elias Koteas, making the most of his opportunity to bring a wild eyed fervour to the film).

Whilst there was every chance that the film could have turned into a sex ‘n’ pyrotechnics exploitomess, in the more than capable hands of David Cronenberg it becomes a captivating study of modern day disinterest and isolationism. The decision to relocate the film from the novel’s original setting of the motorways surrounding London’s Heathrow airport to the nondescript freeways and underpasses of Cronenberg’s hometown Toronto proves to be an inspired one. The film feels like it is taking place nowhere and everywhere, as I mentioned in my recent review of Radio On (1979), the car can prove to be a perfect site for examining technology as self imposed segregation. There are no open freeways here, just the busy soul destroying gridlock of inner city travel. We often see the city viewed from the Ballard’s high rise apartment, a vista of grey tower blocks separated into grids by interchanges and intersections.

Cronenberg also takes the decision to leave the characters as largely emotionless blank surfaces, this purposely leaves the viewer with little to connect to, we never find out the reasons for the malaise of the characters or why they find themselves sexually drawn to the body destroying viscera of the car crash. It is this refusal to demonise or even attempt to rationalise their actions that often brings about uncomfortable feelings in the viewer, especially in the case of Catherine, who due to lack of exposition on her characters part, makes her compliance in some of the more forcefully sexual scenes somewhat ambiguous.

Anyone complaining about the films lack of character driven depth would be missing the point though. The refusal to elucidate any plot points is due to the films preoccupation with surfaces, from the metallic sheen of a showroom Mercedes, to the car part tattoos that James and Vaughan chose to cover their bodies with. The only interior Cronenberg is ever concerned with here is that of the body violated, a thematic concern seen throughout his entire oeuvre from the low budget head explosions of Scanners (1981) to the body as site of disintegration and decay seen in the relatively big budget reworking of The Fly (1986). Here we see it as evident as ever, most infamously in the provocative scene featuring a sexual liaison between Patricia Arquette’s Gabrielle (a perfect physical embodiment of the man/machine transgression) and James, in which her leg scars are put to... interesting... use... Though it should be noted that the films risqué subject matter does prove to be more restrained and suggestive than the more sensationalist types would have you believe.

Ballard’s warped increasingly retro-futurist visions found their perfect outlet in Cronenberg’s odd simulacra of existential modernity, in a fascinating film that is all style, no substance, and all the better for it. A fine addition to the Cronenberg canon.