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IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: U-TURN (1997)

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FEATURING: , , , , ,

PLOT: Bobby Cooper, a man missing two fingers and toting a suitcase full of money, gets stuck in a ramshackle desert community while fleeing mobsters.

Still from U-Turn (1997)

COMMENTS: About half a dozen times over the first third of U Turn, different people ask Bobby (Penn) what happened to his hand and then, upon hearing his repeated refrain of “an accident,” respond with the sage advice: “You should be more careful!” Bobby is indeed living the life of a careless man, as mobsters cut off two of his fingers after growing impatient with his failure to pay his debts. He’s now on the lam with a suitcase full of the mob’s money and a Ford Mustang. When he blows a radiator hose, he lands in the tiny desert town of Superior, Arizona.

Woe betide Bobby, who enters Superior like a mouse tossed into a rattlesnake terrarium. First, he’s ripped off by the town mechanic Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton as a bafflingly self-assured whacko who’s just bright enough to run a scam, but not a watt brighter). Then he loses his case of money in a store robbery. Next he follows local femme fatale Grace McKenna (Lopez) home and gets seduced right out of the shower, only to get punched by her husband, Jake (Nick Nolte), who makes things up to Bobby with a business proposal: help him kill his wife. (No worries, she’ll immediately flip the script.) But are Jake and Grace really lethal rivals trapped in a toxic marriage, or sadomasochist sickos who trick strangers into their badger games? How about the rest of the town, bristling with testy characters who want to start a fight with Bobby, or at least make him miserable? Sheriff Potter (lantern-jawed Boothe, sporting a five-thirty shadow) seems always on the verge of either saving Bobby from peril or locking him up, but one thing’s for sure: he knows more than he lets on.

What unfolds from all this is a pile-up of schemes and counter-schemes with Bobby trying (and mostly failing) to dodge incoming shots. All he wants is to get out of Superior in the worst way, yet an almost supernatural streak of bad luck thwarts him. The plot dutifully veers down a new hairpin twist every twenty minutes or so,  with a pacing that suggests on a Palm Springs vacation. The eccentric characters of Superior prompt Bobby to exclaim, “Is everybody in this town on drugs?” A blind old beggar (Voight) who panhandles on main street becomes Bobby’s personal Jiminy Cricket, offering him half-mad advice culled from a very rugged life. Can Bobby maneuver his way through this thorny desert maze of scheming reptiles and escape?

This is one well-crafted movie with memorable lines and characters, a sure treat for noir fans. Stone occasionally slips into a bit of cartoonish editing, but dwells longingly on the captivating desert scenery. The camera intermittently cuts to shots of vultures, snakes, coyotes, scorpions, and other deadly desert predators, drawing clear comparisons to Superior’s citizens. As a former southwest desert dweller myself, your humble author can verify that U-Turn perfectly gets small-town life there: the run-down businesses, the eccentric oddballs, the harsh environment, and the philosophy that you’d better have a good survival strategy or you have no business being here. The cast does an outstanding job all around. Penn is perfect as Bobby, because he’s a bit of an asshole anyway—so you don’t feel much sympathy for his plight, allowing the film to linger in comedy territory.

U-Turn had a budget of $19 million (clearly going to its all-star cast) and only made $6.6 million, a complete flop. That’s a shame, because it’s well-done and Stone obviously poured love into it. But this is a very lightweight, almost fluffy work, with the whole film amounting to little more than a shaggy dog story (albeit one with a body count). Some fans might compare it to a southwestern version of After Hours. But that’s the one problem with U-Turn: it feels like filler between bigger and better films. It’s good popcorn viewing while it lasts, but hours later it rolls out of your memory like the cinematic tumbleweed that it is.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The first two thirds of U-Turn is a rude, seductive head bender. But around the time it turns from day to night, the film begins to lose its tricky aura of borderline surreal mystery. It becomes another rigged, what-will-happen-next suspense game, and you begin to sense just how arbitrary the twists are. “–Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly (contemporaneous)

U:Turn

U:Turn

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Capsules

CAPSULE: GWEN AND THE BOOK OF SAND (1985)

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Gwen Et Le Livre De Sable

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Voices of Michel Robin, Lorella DiCicco, Armand Babel, Raymond Jourdan, Jacques Ruisseau

PLOT: Sometime “After the gods have left…”, what remains is a desert landscape in which a few animals and nomads make their home; the only danger being the Makou, something that drops objects of various size onto the desert floor, forcing the nomads to live underground. Gwen, an orphan, falls in love with a strange boy, Nokmoon, who is taken away one night by the Makou. She and Roseline (a 173 year old woman) set off on a journey to retrieve him; in doing so, they encounter a mysterious cult.

Still from gwen and the book of sand (1985)

COMMENTS: The post-apocalyptic tale is a genre of its own, but when you take post-apocalypse and desert and put them together, you get The Road Warrior. It’s practically the template followed by its own sequels and countless homages/ripoffs. And when it comes to non-apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy, the template is Dune. These stories are usually heavily plot-driven, with a relentless forward momentum.

Gwen is desert post-apocalypse in a poetic mode. The title might make one surmise that the title character will undergo a series of adventures and challenges for the next hour or so, but it’s not so. The movie is gentler than that. It’s paced leisurely; there is a plot, but it drives lightly. Instead, the film focuses on visuals: characters walking across the sands on stilts, landscapes littered with objects such as oversized utensils and eyeglasses, close-ups of the pincipals. And it’s all the more striking for being animated with a gouache paint palette, which softens things, giving the impression of a dream. (One visual reference that I twigged was Henri Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy.”)

Gwen is about mood and atmosphere: the surreality of the landscape, how the nomads live in this world, how they hunt, how they travel. There’s little explanation of how this desert came to exist, other than the oblique “the gods have left,” or of the Makou. And that’s to the film’s advantage, especially as things get more surreal and the introduction of the Makou Cult (which includes pointed satire of religion). Although there are what could be referred to as “antagonists,” there’s no outright villain, as there would be in a more standard treatment. The music of Pierre Alrand, a longtime collaborator of Laguione’s, adds to the moody atmosphere.

Fantastic Planet, another French animation with a similar mood and adult approach, is Gwen‘s closest relative. Planet, however, is much more brutal in approach. Gwen is made for adults, but it’s family-friendly—although it’s probably way too slow and not antic enough for young children (although the visuals may attract them). Older kids could get more out of it, though again it’s paced much slower than current animated films. Fans of , and especially of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, might also get into the film’s rhythm and mood.

Gwen‘s first ever U.S. release on 4K and Blu-ray comes from Deaf Crocodile, in a limited or standard edition. The movie has a commentary by Samm Deighan, along with an interview with director Laguionie by Dennis Bartok and an intriguing video essay by Dr. Will Dodson and Ryan Verrill. The Limited Edition includes a 60 page booklet with essays by Laguionie, film historian Jennifer Barker, and critic/DC house writer Walter Chaw, as well as a slipcase with new art by Beth Morris.

(This movie was noimated for review by Russa03, who said it was “a surrealist, post-apocalypse animation and it’s beautiful to boot.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Gwen And The Book Of Sand (4k UHD + Blu-ray)

Gwen And The Book Of Sand (4k UHD + Blu-ray)
  • A teenage girl and her 173 year old companion take an epic journey in French director Jean-François Laguionie's hauntingly poetic animated classic.
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: LA CICATRICE INTÉRIEURE [THE INNER SCAR] (1972)

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DIRECTED BY: Philippe Garrel

FEATURING: Nico, Pierre Clémenti, Philippe Garrel, Christian Aaron Boulogne

PLOT: A man leads a woman through the desert;  abandons her as she pleads for help;  a nude archer arrives; the woman travels with him as well, until she again cries out in despair.

Still from La Cicatrice Interieur [The Inner Scar] (1972)

COMMENTS: The woman sits alone in a desolate landscape. A man approaches, wearing a burnt umber suit that is somehow both 70s and Victorian. He pulls the woman to her feet. They walk, heading toward the horizon as we fade to black. Before we’ve had a chance to fade in on the new scene, we can hear her, sobbing and wailing that she can’t breathe. She keens like a toddler who has been denied dessert, and the silent man finally abandons her, trudging off… in what turns out to be a circle, ending up right back with his bereft traveling companion. She shrieks “I don’t need you!” and staggers off into the distance. 

So passes the first ten minutes of La cicatrice intérieure. There isn’t going to be all that much variation on the theme. A first-time viewer should gird their loins for a lot of walking, a lot of screaming, occasional appearances by fire, and several dramatic songs that might be at home in a Ren Faire, courtesy of Nico. It’s the kind of film that will devote five minutes to despairing cries of“There is no justice!” followed immediately by an extended tracking shot of sheep being herded down a dirt road.

The temptation is to view La cicatrice intérieure as some kind of allegory. No one has a name, no one engages in dialogue, none of this should be taken literally. The locations in Egypt, Iceland, and New Mexico are stunning, but the people are barely even characters, and there are almost no situations to speak of. (The film even starts to parody itself, as more than one lengthy pan across a dramatic vista suddenly reveals Nico, once more shattering the peace with her vocal despair like an inescapable buzzkill.) But it doesn’t really say much in an abstract sense, either. The fire, the sword, the giddy nude toddler lying on a fur amidst a field of ice… they’re metaphorical, but without actually representing anything. 

So what is the goal? The film seems to function in part as a kind of proto-music video for Nico, the German chanteuse best known for her collaboration with the Velvet Underground. This makes it all the more curious that she doesn’t get top billing. Here she is, the actor with the most screen time, the only one to make the journey from the beginning of the film to the end, the ostensible reason the film exists at all, and she’s listed second. Although in fairness, perhaps the top spot is meant as a reward for Clémenti, who shows up as the new male lead roughly halfway through the film and who spends the duration completely naked save for a quiver and bow (which go unused). Clémenti is mostly impassive, although he impressively does things unclothed like ride a horse or sail a boat off an icy coast, inspiring the thought, “That looks really uncomfortable.”

The few moments of speech may be a clue as to the directorial intent. Nico alternates between German and English, while Clémenti and an adolescent boy speak French. Garrel reportedly refused to permit subtitles, meaning the literal incomprehensibility of some of the dialogue is a feature, not a bug. Being opaque is the point. That seems to be an overriding philosophy in La cicatrice intérieure; if you’re going to complain about things not making sense, you’re not the right audience. In that case, you might want to take a walk.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… pretentious artsy indulgence at its worst.” – Zev Toledano, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre

(This movie was nominated for review by NGboo, who dubbed it one of “the most surreal and weirdest movies I’ve seen this year” back in 2011. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE PLANTERS (2019)

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DIRECTED BY: Alexandra Kotcheff, Hannah Leder

FEATURING: Alexandra Kotcheff, Hannah Leder, Phil Parolisi, Pepe Serna

PLOT: Emotionally-stunted Martha Plant is a terrible telemarketer and prefers her side hustle of burying junk in the desert for treasure hunters to dig up; things change when she offers her spare room to a recently released mental patient with multiple personalities.

Still from The Planters (2019)

COMMENTS: The appropriately named Martha Plant is an odd woman with an odder passion: she shoplifts souvenir shop trinkets, buries them in the desert, posts the GPS coordinates on a lonely bulletin board, and then digs them up later to find the cash left behind by grateful treasure hunters. (“It’s one of the most successful enterprises in the area,” she brags.) Martha is such a great crackpot that all she needs is an equally oddball sidekick, and the script almost writes itself. Enter Sadie, who literally comes careening down a sand dune, padlocked into a bicycle helmet and carrying a red suitcase, and crashes into Martha, the only landmark visible for miles. Laid-back, whimsical wackiness ensues.

Well, there are a couple more complications. One, Sadie has been released—or rather, cut loose—from a mental hospital that’s gone bankrupt. And she has multiple personalities, which show up over the course of the film. Two, while working at her day job selling air conditioners by phone, Martha develops a friendship with a lonely widower who’s just as socially awkward as the two women. And three, when Sadie peeks into the tins Martha buries, she sees biblical scenes (which play out in claymation): Jesus carrying on a casual conversation with the two crucified thieves, Moses parting the Red Sea, that sort of thing. Sometimes Sadie sees herself inside these little clay parables. These hallucinations are obviously the weirdest feature of a movie that otherwise merely leans to the absurd side of quirky, but it sets up a final scene that, for what it’s worth, indeed goes all the way into the surreal.

With its squared-off mise en scene, bright colors, deadpan line deliveries, twee musical selections, and eccentric characters, comparisons to are inevitable. And although that’s a great touchstone to determine if this might be your bag, Anderson rarely gets anywhere near this weird. Readers of this site might instead find connections to a similar mismatched-oddball desert buddy comedy, Rubin & Ed (although The Planters never gets quite that wild or aggressive). At any rate, it’s unfair to write this original comedy off as simply ersatz Wes. It’s its own weirdo thing.

The Planters has a terrific DIY backstory. It was created almost entirely by the two lead actresses/co-directors, from scriptwriting to costumes, sets, lighting, props, and sound, with no other crew. Begun in 2016, it took half a year to shoot, and spent a couple more years in post-production (Sam Barnett’s claymation creations took a while), finally arriving at film festivals in late 2019, and getting a very limited theatrical release in December 2020. The best part about it all is that, watching the film, you have no idea that the actresses are alone on set; everything seems to flow naturally from deliberate stylistic choices rather than result from filmmakers scrimping to cram their vision within their limitations.

The Planters is currently free on Amazon Prime for subscribers.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Odd. Quirky. Deliberately stilted at times. Colourfully shot with interesting camera angles. Filled with eccentric characters.”–Carey, OrcaSound (contemporaneous)