Rocky rock n’ roll world proves to be a dull subject matter.
It is often said that you can take two dissimilar personalities and when put together an attraction may occur, however, there are also examples of people with similar likes who are attracted to one another because of their resemblances. Splitting the Hollywood hills and separating the volume of personalities who try to make it in the biz are streets like L. Canyon. In this Californiacation world people are pulled in and pushed together. Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon acts like a literal intersection and a crossroads of life, where opposites attract and where sexual fascinations are re-awaken.
With faded rock-group t-shirt personas and a class of 1960 values, our rock n’ roll hero Jane (Frances McDormand-Fargo), is a producer whose antics are popular as they are unpopular depending who she speaks to. In one stance, we have the mother that acts like a child (witnessed in old black and white pictures of her motherly abilities with stoned-out hotel-room rock stars) and a grown child (Christian Bale-American Psycho) that acts like her better in this tug-of-war relationship, of course with time we figure out who the true child is. Then as delicious subplots, we have some lip-locking episodes along with the idea of some adulterous extra-curricular activities (why is it that rock stars always get to have multiple partners?). To showcase the cast of characters, Cholodenko uses a range of possible ‘attractions’ to show their interconnections and thus explores how un-satisfaction of self and of those who surround us are reasons for a struggle in one’s identity. Surprisingly, the open-ended film conclusion doesn’t tell us much about whose these people were.
Hence, to get any pleasure from this picture I suggest holding your breath for the film’s first 15 minutes or until the introduction of McDormand’s character. The cliché and tacky storyline design of the picture is annoyingly unflattering to a true character development, thankfully, this doesn’t become a totally horrible watch because McDormand plays her character authentically– not afraid to put herself in compromising ‘positions’, while her younger counterpart in Kate Beckinsale (Shooting Fish) is supposedly a prude who deflowers herself by taking a whiskey shot and then a ‘give me a break’ dip in a pool without showing the process of her awaking. Instead, we are given heavy arguments and lousy aftermaths which are as fun as the reproduction cycle of a fruit fly.
There is some minor fun to this film; the double connotations found in the dialogue provide some depth to the character’s dilemmas, but what is refreshing is watch how McDormand portrays her character with balls big enough to flash or make-out on screen. I like how this actor is not afraid to show her age and her wrinkles in the same sort of performances as in Wonderboys and Almost Famous. Unfortunately, Cholodenko’s second effort doesn’t life up to High Art, and the biggest problem is that it fails to pull the viewer in with a script that is all too predictable and weak with an end result that sees the audience become a bystander to a bogus play on sexuality, which gives unlikely character motivations from good-looking people who eagerly swap an AC/DC t-shirt but draw a line when exchanging bodily fluids.
