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The wayward daughter from Hardcore gets a voice at last, and sounds an awful lot like Joan Jett. Rock 'n' roll versus Scripture in Cleveland, contrasting spiritual searches in the industrial void. "A top 40 band, you might as well be working at the factory." Garage belter, single mother, casual thief, fumbler of monologues. Her adversary is the estranged matriarch (Gena Rowlands), fading fast but still able to turn a dinner blessing into a passive-aggressive scold for her visiting kin. Sadsack father (Jason Miller) blends into the wallpaper, bandmate brother (Michael J. Fox) plays uneasy mediator. "You've got real family loyalty. Too bad your sister ain't worth it." Not refried Bresson but sanded-off Pialat, a detour into mainstream drabness for Paul Schrader between the extravagance of Mishima and the impressionism of Patty Hearst. The world of squalid motel rooms and stolen supermarket steaks opposite antiseptic domestic spaces, a ragged community of musical wannabes with names like The Barbusters and The Hunzz, the punk artist's eternal danger of succumbing to "a new sound, like... techno pop metal." Pointing to the glow of an arcade video game, the heroine declares her philosophy: "Nothing comes together. No heaven, no hell, just moments." The leather jacket discarded and picked up, the freight train slogging outside the window during a hospital prayer, the winding of a watch on a corpse's wrist—acute details in a hazy family drama. Jett's sullen rawness remains the center of Schrader's contemplation, a smile is rare enough for a freeze-frame. "Well, I'm a little hot-wired but I'm feeling okay / And I got a little lost along the way..." With Michael McKean, Thomas G. Waites, Cherry Jones, Paul J. Harkins, Billy L. Sullivan, Tom Irwin, Michael Rooker, and Del Close.
--- Fernando F. Croce |