Price of the View

I saw this film recently at a film festival in Los Angeles. It was by far the best on the program. Writer/director Dave Bergeson takes us on a dizzying journey through the vagaries of Hollywood, through the life of Phillipe De Conville, a bright star turned recluse, and through his own Herculean effort to make a film.

Humorous, sometimes darkly so, Price of the View never loses its humanity. It is an incisive exploration of artistic struggle and the creative soul, from the frustrated attempts of a young filmmaker (played by Bergeson himself, in a wonderfully confident performance) to the lost glamour of a forgotten Hollywood career, that of the central character, the elusive Phillipe De Conville. De Conville is one of those Hollywood spectres living in the shadowed hollows of the Hollywood hills, lost in a reverie of past glory, living with memories that—through a haze of alcohol and vainglory—blur past and present, reality and dreams that have long since gone sour. De Conville is a creation that leaves one's jaw agape. In a kimono (or a toga!) De Conville rages and seduces, larger than life and pitiable at the same time. Histrionic, ludicrous, profoundly touching, De Conville's character is a breathtaking achievement.

Assisting—or abetting—Dave is the brilliant Natalie Dolishny who plays his calculating, cold- blooded wife with hilarious abandon. Dolishny is a brave and vibrant actress who sinks her teeth into the role like it was a steaming Sacher Torte.

Price of the View is a stylistic tour-De-force, blending memory, fantasy, celluloid reality, and the mundane struggle to merely survive. Equal parts dream play, raucous comedy, Hollywood fable, and crime thriller, Bergeson adeptly brings it off with assurance. It is enormously complex but never incomprehensible. It is funny, moving, and beautifully executed. An enormously satisfying lifetime in under 30 minutes.