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Aesthete and philistine, neo-noir and screwball romance, "our forms aren't exactly simpatico." The Jenny Holzer proxy (Jodie Foster) specializes in LED signs on which slogans like "Murder has its sexual side" scroll, she goes on the lam after witnessing a gangland execution. The hit man on her trail (Dennis Hopper) has his own artsy side, blinking at giant Pop cutouts and molesting a saxophone against Bosch blow-ups. "Not a fuckin' team player," he tracks down his prey in New Mexico only to fall in love, soon they're fleeing assassins while waxing poetic. "Not only are you a murderer and a rapist, but you're a pompous fucking asshole." Languid film maudit and jumbled installation gallery, Hopper on postmodernism and no mistake. A thing made of images, a stucco theater with red neon streaks, a monstrous effigy crumbling in an indigenous fire festival, a cabin bed strewn with pink coconut Sno Balls. The heroine holds an illustration of Georgia O'Keeffe's Ranchos Church before the real thing in Taos, in between them pulls a truck so that a company logo fills the screen. "There's something going on here that I really don't understand. But I like it." Mr. Ice with sunglasses and fedora, the killer becomes a shy little boy while watching his captive don garter belt and stockings, which is where Foster's palpable irritation with her co-star/director turns into amusement. The hallucinatory supporting cast includes Joe Pesci rehearsing for Goodfellas and John Turturro in a cowboy hat, Dean Stockwell's understated lunacy and Vincent Price's cadaverous elegance, doofy Charlie Sheen and bemused Fred Ward and Bob Dylan with a chainsaw, why not. "Fuckin' artists!" A certain Robbe-Grillet streak throughout is answered in The Blue Villa, Ward and all. With Tony Sirico, Julie Adams, Sy Richardson, Helena Kallianiotes, Anthony Pena, Catherine Keener, and Alex Cox.
--- Fernando F. Croce |