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BY KIM MORGAN
Buffalo
66 |
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Can one person's life be significantly changed by two football games? Vincent Gallo thinks so. The former performance artist-turned-Calvin Klein model asks the question as leading man, writer, composer and director of Buffalo 66, his debut film. Gallo's character, Billy Brown, was born in 1966 on the day that the Buffalo Bills won their third American Football League Championship; because his Bills-obsessed mother (Anjelica Huston) missed the game, she never loved him. The other football game that plays an unhappy role in Billy's life is one the Bills lose, a game on which the hapless youth had placed a $10,000 bet. He winds up indebted to a tough bookie (Mickey Rourke) who forces him to take a criminal rap for an associate as payment. Stuck in prison for five years, Billy becomes more bitter and mean-spirited than ever. As the film opens, the aggressively depressed Billy has just been released from prison and is waiting for the bus that will shuttle him back to his parents' house. Clad in red elf boots and polyester pants so tight and low-slung that you can see the crease of his backside as he sits at the bus stop, Billy is a miserable loser. In town, he drops into a dance studio to take a leak and call his parents. His parents don't care about him ("Ma, this is Billy." "Who?" "Billy, your son." "Who?"), but Billy still strives to impress them, so he lies about having a successful career and a beautiful wife. Insisting that he bring his wife to the house, Billy's mother causes him to do something rash: He kidnaps a cute tap-dancer named Layla (Christina Ricci) and forces her to pose as his wife. In this sitcom scenario, Billy instructs Layla to take the name Wendy and, at least in front of his parents, pretend to like him. "You'll adore me, you'll love me, you'll cherish me," he tells her. "Jesus Christ, you can't live without me." Layla complies, but too eagerly. She is such a hit with his folks, Jimmie (Ben Gazzara) and Janet, that Billy becomes annoyed. He wants the attention; he wants the love. He doesn't get it. He does, however, get attention from Layla. But Billy can't be bothered; he hates--or he thinks he hates--everyone and everything. He yells and belittles and assumes that most people are as slow-witted as his only friend, Goon (Kevin Corrigan). He finds joy only in bowling and cleanliness; even eating annoys him. Billy's annoyance over his sorry life is the rub intended to carry the picture; it's presumably meant to be alternately heartbreaking and hilarious. Unfortunately, it's rarely either. Gallo plays Billy as he should, grating like fingernails on a chalkboard, but his frustrating portrait is something we never like or even get used to. It's simply aggravating. His acting plays like a tired replica of Robert DeNiro at maximum vehemence and without modulation. Like a broken record, he repeats many of his lines: "I'm talking here! I'm talking here! I'm talking here!" Not only is this sophomoric, but it also strongly suggests that Gallo just doesn't know what to do with himself on screen. Good actors don't have to be so obviously reactive. Soon we don't blame his parents for disliking him: We want to slap him, too. Ricci shows admirable patience playing against Gallo; her Layla is remarkably deep despite the dumb-blonde lines she utters. The usually surly actress is perfect as a sweety-pie and is the most touching character in the film. Wearing a dreamy light-blue ensemble complete with matching tap shoes and eyeshadow, Ricci has never looked so adorable. Her huge Kewpie-doll head atop her small, fleshy body is alternately erotic and awkward, and her eyes are big brown pools of empathy and sadness. The picture's other characters are similarly effective. Tough guys Gazzara, Rourke and Jan-Michael Vincent (who plays a bowling-alley employee) are all wonderful in their small parts-- particularly Gazzara, a master of bottled-up rage. Gallo should have studied Gazzara's bitter performance in the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder; he would have learned volumes in just one of the great actor's grunted lines. To his immense credit, Gallo has learned from the medium of film itself, and he displays a striking visual talent. Shooting in 35 mm reversal film stock, Gallo achieves a dream world of saturated colors that is as gritty as it is gorgeous. He also utilizes his hometown of Buffalo superbly, turning a place that could have been photographed as white trash-ville into a surreal vision of nightmare and fantasy. If only his substance had reached the heights of his style, Buffalo 66 could have been one of the best indie films of the year.
originally published August 19, 1998 |
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