Ask The Dust

Robert Towne was one of the key players in the 70s renaissance of the American film industry, the writer of Chinatown (1974) and one of the go-to scriptwriters of the time. He is in home territory with this adaptation of the cult novel of the same name by John Fante set in Los Angeles in the early 30s. Unsurprisingly, Towne wrote the script yet despite having all the elements for a torrid B-grade screen romance he does not manage to get them to work.

At the centre of the problem is the casting of Colin Farrell as Arturo Bandini the aspiring writer who, in the spirit of the era, comes to town to write The Great American Novel. Irish actor Farrell is good-looking and does a convincing American accent but he is too frivolous, at times seemingly even comedic, in his performance to bear the weight of doomed love which the story requires. The result is a gaping hole that robs proceedings of their raison d'etre.

The essence of the story is transgression and Towne with the assistance of cinematographer Caleb Deschanel invests the film with a noir-ish sensibility, much aided by Arturo's voiceover, whilst populating the background with lost souls like Hellfrick (Donald Sutherland), Vera (Idina Menzel) and Camilla (Salma Hayek, looking very much the Latino Catherine Deneuve) who, we are led to believe is some kind of femme fatale. But none of this bears fruit, the film maintaining a dramatic monotone and looking a little too tidy in its production design to engage us.

Compare this film, for instance, to Bob Rafaelson's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) with its volatile dynamic between Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange and one can see and feel what is missing - the sense of unbridled carnality that leads the lovers to their destruction. Nothing comparable is evident here. We get some soft-core nudity and some stabs at libidinal intensity but it's little more than tokenistic whilst the inter-racial sub-theme that is an important part of the novel is rather weakly aligned with the character's erotic motivations. Somewhat symptomatically of the film's weaknesses, Camilla's tidy departure from Arturo's life borders on the laughable. Apparently this was a long-cherished project for Towne and with its subject matter one can understand why but he needed the directorial skills of Polanski to have done it justice.

DVD Extras: Audio Commentary by Towne and Deschanel; Cast Interviews; Making-of featurette; B-roll and original theatrical trailer.

Available from: Madman

 

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