Flirting during potential disaster

Turns out it’s actually key to the set-up, but I liked the fact that I’m So Excited! (Los amantes pasajeros) opens with what feels like a non sequitur, a sequence involving two major international stars—Almodóvar alumni both—in bit parts, having a heart-to-heart while ostensibly preparing a passenger jet for a transatlantic journey. The promise of inspired nonsense whetted my appetite for Almodóvar’s first full-on comedy in 20 years. There are those that feel that, like Woody Allen, the Spanish writer-director never recovered once he veered away from comedy. Personally, I’m a huge admirer of the later work, but once you sample the dizzy absurdities of something like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), it can become tough to argue. But no one is likely to call this a return to form.

The problem with I’m So Excited! is that it reaches cruising altitude right off the top and then goes in circles for the film’s remainder. I’m not just being cute—that’s quite literally what happens in this story of a Madrid-to-Mexico City flight that winds up looping over Toledo when the crew discovers that the landing gear has been compromised. Uncertain how to prepare for or where to make an emergency landing, and facing the possibility of catastrophe, the flight attendants dope the economy passengers to sleep—with some drug that seems to cause flatulence—before proceeding to get smashed themselves on various substances. With the specter of death looming and libations loosening inhibitions, the crew and a handful of business-class passengers immediately begin unloading secrets and, why not?, getting super-horny.

There’s a self-proclaimed clairvoyant virgin (Lola Dueñas) who knows something is amiss and starts sizing up a sleepy boner in the rear cabin. There’s a middle-aged movie star (Guillermo Toledo) who makes an in-flight call to a girlfriend on the cusp of suicide. There’s a mysterious Zappa-moustached Mexican in a black suit (José Luis Torrijo) conspicuously reading a copy of Bolaño’s 2666. There’s Norma (Cecilia Roth) whose diva-like sense of entitlement stems from her supposed cache of evidence of powerful men indulging in her services as an ultra-high-class sex worker. There are two sexually ambivalent pilots (Antonio de la Torre, Hugo Silva) and a trio of cuddly-effeminate stewards (Javier Cámara, Carlos Areces, Raúl Arévalo) who provide much of the film’s most enjoyable moments because of their inability to shut up. Unfortunately, the stewards also feature in what is easily the film’s worst, if not downright unwatchable sequence, in which Almodóvar stages a lip-synch/dance number to the unabridged, normally irresistible titular Pointer Sisters’ hit about female wantonness. Full of limpid whip-pans and lousy choreography, Almodóvar spends the whole of the song embarrassingly aping antiquated music video clichés. It’s like walking into a drunken private karaoke party stone-cold sober.

The premise of I’m So Excited! could easily be that of a porno—this is a quality I find quite endearing. Unfortunately, as with porn, there isn’t really anywhere to go once the story is in motion and, unlike a porno, there’s no real climax and no destination. Which isn’t to say that there’s no fun to be had; I laughed plenty during the first half. But once the best jokes have been spent, I’m So Excited seems to switch to Almodóvar-autopilot, at which point you’d might as well snooze with everybody in the cheap seats. 

         

Riding for the feeling: Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere begins with an unidentified man pushing a DVD-R—the words “Road to Nowhere” written on its face—into a laptop. “Velma was always my window into the story,” the man says, and as the disc begins to play, we see a woman—Velma?—seated on a bed, blow-drying her nails. The body of the laptop constitutes a “window” all its own, until the camera pushes in and the window falls away, and the woman on the bed is suddenly compelled to blow-dry her face, as though some arctic chill was overtaking her. The image of her doing this holds for a long while, virtually static, but oddly riveting—she’s preparing for something. Soon a man drives up to the woman’s house, and enters; soon we hear a shot; soon after that the woman departs. She drives the man’s car to a lake, where, in another initially serene moment, a Piper Cherokee falls from the sky and crashes into the water.

What’s going on? What sort of movie is this? Neither question is easily answered. Road to Nowhere, written by Steven Gaydos, is a movie about the making of a movie about a blog about a real crime, one involving suicide, murder and money, and whose facts remain elusive. It’s about a filmmaker (Tygh Runyan), teasingly named Mitchell Haven, entranced by an beautiful inexperienced actress (Shannyn Sossamon) who may or may not be connected to the woman she’s been contracted to play. (“I don’t act,” she tells him. “That’s perfect,” he replies.) Drenched in mystery, blurring demarkations between what’s rehearsed, what’s improvised, and what’s genuine, it’s about how illusion overtakes all attempts to capture the real, and contains enough stories-within-stories to make it more Paul Auster than any of Auster’s movies. In some ways it’s also a tribute to actress and photogrpaher Laurie BIrd, who gave such arresting, indelible, troubling performances in Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Cockfighter (1974), who Hellman fell in love with, and who killed herself in 1979 at the age of 25. Road to Nowhere is Hellman’s first movie in over 20 years and, after a single, delightfully baffled viewing, I’m already willing to call it one of his best. It’s now available on DVD and blu-ray from Entertainment One.

Comparisons to Mulholland Drive are inevitable and useful too, given the movie industry milieu, the unresolved enigmas, and the implication that role-playing is both inherently dangerous and quite possibly a wayward route to revelation. But Road to Nowhere, shot in mostly in North Carolina, is more a chamber piece, and also less coy with regards to its knowingness about Hollywood and the spell cast over filmmakers by the work of those who came before them. There’s also a marvelous a cappella performance in a bar from Bonnie Pointer, and a subtextual running commentary about the allure of new digital technology and how it further complicates the ontologies of filmmaking. Road to Nowhere is, in short, very rich, smart, utterly puzzling, hypnotic, and easy on the eyes and ears. I can’t wait to see it again. I don’t know that I’ll be able to make any more sense of its plot afterwards.