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The surrealistic mystery of New York, pace Dalí, is a yuppie doing witching-hour penance for his lust. The sterile safety of a computer office and the glittering peril of Soho at night, a matter of purgatory versus hell for the white-collar drone (Griffin Dunne), the prospect of a fling kicks off the odyssey. "Different rules apply this late. Know what I mean?" The neurotic siren (Patricia Arquette) enters as a Henry Miller quote and exits as a scribbled sign, her roommate (Linda Fiorentino) is a spiky sculptress whose latest work evokes papier-mâché Edvard Munch. Città delle donne, "Miss Beehive 1965" (Teri Garr) and Mister Softee vigilante (Catherine O'Hara), unrelenting furies in the downtown labyrinth. "I just wanted to leave my apartment, maybe meet a nice girl. And now I gotta die for it." A screwball nocturne, it might be a sinister Blake Edwards except that it's Martin Scorsese exorcising bad vibes through a lark of psychosexual fears and crash-zooms. (Taxi Driver windows are visible, one reveals an argument capped with a shooting and witnessed by the marooned schmuck: "I'll probably get blamed for that.") The long sleep of reason, the bartender (John Heard) lends a key and his toilet readily overflows, Tweedledee and Tweedledum look a lot like Cheech and Chong. Nabokov's "Cloud, Castle, Lake," Mohawk night at the Club Berlin. Bored with the mainstream and alarmed at the underground, a fumbling Lothario's position or perhaps an anxious filmmaker's. The Woman in the Window, D.O.A. and Killer's Kiss are among the fleeting impressions, A Bucket of Blood figures crucially and, sure enough, there's Dick Miller. The last quarter buys a moment of peace with the lonesome barfly (Verna Bloom), "Is That All There Is" on the jukebox before the rebirth on the pavement. "No, thanks. I've had about enough excitement for one night." Demme takes a different tack in Something Wild. Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus. With Will Patton, Bronson Pinchot, Rocco Sisto, Larry Block, and Clarence Felder.
--- Fernando F. Croce |