Ask the Dust

I read the book 8 years ago. I was moved by it. I saw the movie today, and everything in the movie was the way I pictured things in the book. This has got to be the best movie of the year. I thought it did justice to the great John Fante's classic. I can also see why Charles Bukowski liked Fante so much... he was one of the first writers that wrote about the LA of rooming houses, cheap hotels and seedy lounges... although, I feel Ask the Dust, the book and the movie, made it seem a little more romantic. I can't say enough about Colin Farrell's performance; this is by far my favorite. Salma, I have always liked. The sets and the costumes were also spot on. I was transported back in time. I liked the fact that there was very little profanity, which kept the integrity of the book and was most likely accurate for the period that was being portrayed. I think no matter what station in life you were in back then, you always tried to put on your best face. This was interesting, because it contrasted with the dingy atmosphere of 1930's LA.

I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Towne give a talk in Toronto, in which he mused on his long and (mostly) illustrious career. From Chinatown to Personal Best to The Firm, he spouted off anecdotes and insights into Hollywood and the screen writing process in general.

Then the audience was treated to a special preview screening of "Ask the Dust." It would seem that this has been a labour of love for Mr. Towne; one that has been several decades in the making. So in that sense, perhaps this film doesn't merit harsh criticism. The fact that Towne got it made is to be commended.

It's not a bad film, by any right. It boasts two decent performances from its leads Salma Hayek and Colin Farrell, lush cinematography, meticulous period detail and a sumptuous score. All the elements of a great film are there. However, nothing really gels.

My guess is that the source material is the film's ultimate downfall. It's dated, and contradictory. What begins as a pulpy potboiler in the vein of "The Postman Rings Twice" becomes a politically correct tirade against intolerance. Oh, and there's a healthy dose of "La Boheme" thrown in there for good measure.

The first half of the film is intriguing as the characters' motivations are enigmatic and unpredictable. Hayek comes across as a latina femme fatale, while Farrell plays the flawed noirish anti-hero. L.A. itself is a character - one of a city at odds with its surroundings. The description of the sand (or dust) from the desert filling the air is particularly poignant.

Halfway through, the film takes a perplexing turn. Turns out there is no mystery behind the motives of the leads. They just wanted to be loved/understood. Cue Hollywood clichés, and end scene. You can't help but be disappointed.

Perhaps in the hands of a '70s auteur director like Polanski, Antonioni or Bob Rafelson, the source material could have been tweaked or restructured to yield a more surprising and challenging film. I even wondered what the film would have been like with a 70s screen icon like Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino in the lead role.

As voluntary Cinema Manager at Coalville's Century Theatre, I'm always on the lookout for films of artistic quality which are not necessarily multiplex successes. I must confess I did read a couple of newspaper reviews when this film was first released in the UK, - they weren't particularly favourable but they did highlight the Robert Towne/Chinatown connection, - but I forgot all about it until I visited Italy for a weekend holiday in July. As I was passing a cinema in Verona, I was attracted by a couple of very attractive stills...for Ask The Dust. I decided to find out a bit more about the film when I returned home. After doing this, I felt it would be deserving of a screening at our little venue and I booked the film as soon as it was made available to the non-theatrical circuit. I eventually showed the film last night and I believe this was the first public showing in Leicestershire. I fully endorse the comments of others before me, - the lighting, sets, period sense and cinematography are absolutely marvellous, - just literally lovely to look at. I thought Colin Farrell was fine in the central role and am at a loss why he's come in for criticism from some quarters for this performance. Salma Hayek also scores in her sniping early scenes with Farrell and portrays well her character's fears and insecurities at a time when being Mexican was so obviously looked down upon (a very neat selection by Towne for the film excerpt in the cinema scene). Pity our own Eileen Atkins had such a tiny role. Although certainly not a commercial film, it does feature some memorable scenes such as the Long Beach earthquake and the moonlight swim among the crashing waves. And I really liked the idyllic seaside period enjoyed by the two (eventual!) lovers...with the little dog. A good sharp ending in true old-fashioned Hollywood style with a nod towards Camille, which apparently is not in the book, so I've read. After the film finished, I wasn't sure how my audience would react but comments were generally very favourable...and the fairly overt but well-handled sex scene had caused no offence...in fact I did get a couple of middle aged ladies offering glowing expressions with their references to Mr Farrell's appearance in that scene. A very good, quality film, lovingly made by Robert Towne...but one couldn't help thinking with a little more sharpness early on, it could have been even better. It's a piece that will linger in the memory though, in my opinion, and you can't say that about the majority of the modern day films.

"I am a lover of beasts and men." So Colin Farrell's writer, Arturo Bandini, reveals his humanistic longings and along the way his inexperience with humans. His love is the Mexican beauty Camilla, played better than Katy Jurado ever could by Salma Hyeck, with whom he fights from the cute meeting to the very end. But it is a love nevertheless, with a strength often given only to those who fight passionately.

This is 1935 LA, land of love and art, with a whole bunch of racism thrown in between the abstractions. Arturo's being Italian throws a certain doubt on whether he could eventually marry this Mexican Camilla. Ask the Dust subtly explores a melting pot of racism, of course including the ever present persecution of the Jews. In fact, no one in the film has found a mate or a home yet anyway, so loneliness and disenfranchisement are always there.

Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel's shots are each a marvel of painterly cinema, just the right brownish, noirish lighting and shadows to create a marginal world of dream and destitution where only love could create wealth. And what a love. These two leads are to the camera born, their dark good looks making them as much brother and sister as reluctant lovers. Farrell speaks almost as if he is narrating, which he does as well; his intonations are weighty in sotto voce, uncharacteristic of the more flamboyant characters he is used to playing. Hyeck has lusty dignity with a spicy stubbornness that makes you believe she is worthy of marrying this gringo and living happily ever after.

But that ending is the clichéd part of the story, as if all stories about writers must end with a tragedy. Towne, however, tempers the darkness with hope, an aspiration in abundant supply in lala land, but the compromised kind reminding us at the end of his towering Chinatown that it's out of our hands.

"Ask the Dust" has excellent elements that almost come together as a whole.

Like "End of the Affair" and "The White Countess", it surrounds a fraught love affair with exquisite looking period recreation that almost sucks the life out of it. (As with those films, the senior citizens at my matinée really enjoyed the period aspect.) Set in a sepia-tinged Depression-era Los Angeles of polluted palm trees, it is populated equally by youthful blond California girls and boys and old people at the end of the continent and their lines, as symbolized by Donald Sutherland's begging boarding house neighbor, like a ghost from his role in "The Day of the Locust".

What saves the film is the frank dialog and odd sparks between Colin Farrell, as repressed Italian-American writer from Colorado, novelist John Fante's alter ego with the even more ethnically redolent name of "Arturo Bandini", and Salma Hayak as a non-stereotyped Mexican spitfire "Camilla Lopez". Their repartee about their biases is raw and fresh.

Significantly, they are not the usual naive teen lovers, but are adults with mileage who are striving to change the trajectory of their lives. In this discrimination-filled, pre-celebration of the melting pot/rainbow environment (heavy-handedly demonstrated such as by their viewing Ruby Keeler's famous line from "Dames" "I'm free, white, and 21."), both are trying to make it in a specific image of the American Dream, a non-ethnic one, though we hear very little about their own sense of their ethnic identity. She is even dating a nasty guy named White in the vain hope of obtaining a green card and citizenship.

Hayak's character is the easier to understand, as we see her exuberate in vibrant blue moonlight when she feels free with him, especially in vivid ocean scenes (she is absolutely stunning swimming naked), and then in bright light at a seashore idyll. This gorgeous scene gives "From Here to Eternity" a run for its money as the sexiest crashing of waves coupling in the movies. Though after all her sexually aggressive seduction efforts, their lovemaking is lit beautifully in the dark but conventionally choreographed as I expected her to demand more equality in bed. But then she's already started coughing with Movie Star Disease, even if it's explained more in the plot than usual.

Even with his constant florid more than bordering on pretentious narration, sometimes in an exaggerated lower register, of his writing efforts (with the usual scenes of paper being ripped out a manual typewriter as he receives encouragement from H. L. Mencken) that doesn't really thematically integrate into the film until the end, it is harder to understand why it takes so long to get his uptight clothes off despite many importunings. There is an unusually sweet flirtation over literacy, but it seemed more like condescension on his part, especially to help her get citizenship, than sharing with her his love of words. The non-narrated scenes are a relief and are beautiful to look at, as the cinematography of Caleb Deschanel (dad of actresses Zoey and Emily) is consistently lovely.

But then Farrell is surrounded by eccentric characters who are all hiding emotional or physical scars until he can face up to his own to find his real writer's voice. Idina Menzel's "Vera Rifkin" is a well-educated Jewish housekeeper whose California dreams (or borderline crazed fantasies) are for some reason now focused on being a writer's muse.

Surprisingly, there is very little period music, maybe for budget reasons. A prominent and excellent selection is Artie Shaw's version of "Gloomy Sunday" which has its own legend of love and death. The score is sometimes intrusive and not as evocative of the clashing ethnic traditions as it could have been.