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Film: Indie Flix
Spiraling downward
By STEVE PERSALL and PHILIP BOOTH
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 27, 2003
Love Liza (R) (93 min.) -- Something makes Todd Louiso's Love Liza feel like a film from the 1970s, and it isn't just Philip Seymour Hoffman's careless hair. The movie possesses an aimless sense of purpose, defiantly avoiding the point of so many depressed episodes of an insignificant life. My thoughts constantly floated to open-ended films from a lost generation ago -- Five Easy Pieces and Scarecrow foremost -- as this bizarre character study unfolded.
[Photo: Sony Pictures]
Philip Seymour Hoffman tries to get his life back on track after his wife’s suicide in Love Liza.
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Make that a lack-of-character study. Wilson Joel (Hoffman) is a disheveled Web page designer whose wife, Liza, has committed suicide. His response to her death suggests why she may have done so; Wilson is an emotional weakling who, if he didn't directly contribute to Liza's misery, obviously wouldn't have been helpful. Perhaps his awareness of that shortcoming makes him avoid reading her suicide note.
Wilson doesn't mope; he tries too hard to re-assimilate himself to the world, laughing too loudly at bad jokes until his bosses suggest a vacation. It's a measure of Wilson's grief that he returns to the beach resort where he and Liza honeymooned, sipping the same silly boat drinks. Nothing is better when he returns home.
Seeking an escape from reality, Wilson starts inhaling gasoline fumes to dull his pain. Curiosity becomes an addiction, with a petrol junkie making transparent excuses for the odor and his irrational behavior.
Meanwhile, Liza's grieving mother, Mary Ann (Kathy Bates), wonders what Liza wrote in her farewell note, pestering Wilson for an answer, disgusted by his downward spiral. Bates plays the role like a wounded bulldog, snarling in self-defense, yet too pained to back it up. This is the performance she should be taking to the Oscars, not her white-trash caricature in About Schmidt.
Hoffman might also deserve to be there. In every film he has been a magnetic lump, a bystander content with being a lackey (Boogie Nights, 25th Hour), a louse (The Talented Mr. Ripley) or a meekly repulsive loser (Magnolia, Happiness). He's the real Mr. Cellophane whom everyone sees right through. Now he finally has a showcase role, scripted by his brother Gordy Hoffman, who won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Wilson's descent offers Hoffman plenty of meaty anguish to play, as tough to watch sometimes as Nicolas Cage's alcoholic in Leaving Las Vegas. The screenplay meanders in a fashion at odds with today's average attention span, but that seems completely in synch with Louiso's nods to 1970s anti-heroism. Love Liza is depressing, but in an honest fashion that occasionally thrills. B+
-- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
That's Italian?
The Bread, My Sweet (Not rated, probably PG-13 due to language) (105 min.) -- Actual dialogue from this overworked romantic drama, as spoken by a doctor tut-tutting about a patient's refusal to seek medical attention: "You know how your old Italians are." Actual critic's response: You know how contrived and manipulative your ethnic comedies are, particularly those made or released in the wake of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
The Bread, My Sweet, despite its overwrought acting, exposition delivered as dialogue, patently absurd setup and a center of pure sugar, does clear up a conundrum that's been plaguing some folks for years. Where has Scott Baio been since television's Charles in Charge ended its run 13 years ago?
Baio, to the relief of his fans, has found work in a series of independent films, including this one, writer-director Melissa Martin's directorial debut. Her film was released three years ago in Pittsburgh and is just now making its way around the country after a long run there and, not incidentally, after the surprise success of Greek Wedding.
Nuptials are the nominal subject of Bread, too. Dominic (Baio), corporate raider and owner of a neighborhood bakery in Pittsburgh, pledges to marry law-school grad/Peace Corps dropout Lucca (Kristin Minter of television's ER) after her mother, Bella (Rosemary Prinz), is diagnosed with cancer. Bella and her profane, incredibly cranky husband, Massimo (John Seitz), live above the bakery, and Dominic feels responsible for the happiness of the elderly couple, and that of his brothers, Eddie (Billy Mott), an actor and a womanizer, and the mentally disabled gentle giant Pino (Shuler Hensley).
Some viewers may find the complications comical or compelling, but others may have difficulty stomaching the movie's many failings: hammy performances (although Baio is passable); stilted pacing; extreme, redundant closeups of faces, Italian-American pastry delicacies and corporate types chowing down on junk food; and multiple shots of an anonymous gypsy/goth girl twirling around and banging on a tambourine. Hey, Chachi, make it stop. C-
-- PHILIP BOOTH, Times staff writer
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