SubUrbia – Review

subUrbia

with Giovanni Ribisi, Steve Zahn, Amie Carey, Parker Posey
Written by Eric Bogosian (based on his play)
Directed by Richard Linklater
by William Ham

It may seem an odd pairing in certain respects – Eric (Talk Radio) Bogosian’s dark, cynical theatrical sensibilities coming head to head with Richard (Slacker) Linklater’s sweet-natured, seemingly unstructured cine-meanderings – but, in the case of subUrbia, it’s a match made in observational heaven.

The reason is simple – both Bogosian and Linklater have an uncanny knack for reproducing voices, archetypal speech and behavioral patterns that capture personalities in a few verbal brushstrokes. And subUrbia, a piece of acidic strip-mall anthropology first mounted on the stage in 1994, could probably only have worked on the big screen through Linklater’s sympathetic eyes. Like his other pictures, it stays within a twenty-four-hour framework, uses a single town as its setting, and the story emerges more from the characters than the other way around. That it is by far the bleakest vision he’s produced to date can largely be pegged as Bogosian’s influence, but it’s a well-proportioned collaboration; Bogosian gives Linklater splotches of black comedy, Linklater provides the human rhythms that transcend Bogosian’s staginess, and both men are well-attuned to the desperate edges of the small-town psyche.

The setting is Burnfield, a monumentally generic town of identical houses, liquor stores and fast food. One by one, we meet the twenty-year-old prisoners of the picket fence that make up the story: Jeff (Giovanni Ribisi), the self-styled intellectual whose idea of freedom is to live in a tent in his parents’ garage; his girlfriend Sooze (Amie Carey), a sweet-smiling punkette who likes to give impromptu performance-art exhibitions in front of the dry-cleaners; Tim (Nicky Katt), a cynical Air Force dropout with a talent for preying on others’ weaknesses and insecurities; Bee-Bee (Dina Spybey), a messed-up kid just out of rehab; and Buff (Steve Zahn), the town’s walking id on a ceaseless quest for kicks of all kinds.

The film (and, indeed, most of their lives) takes place in the parking lot of the Circle A, a convenience store run by an angry young Pakistani and the stage where these kids play out their active inertia. This particular night sees the return of an old classmate, Pony (Jayce Bartok), now a moderately successful rock star playing the conquering hero with stretch limo and ditzy publicist Erica (Parker Posey) in tow. As might be guessed, Pony’s homecoming sets off an explosive evening of recrimination, ambition, jealousy, sex, and violence that changes everything by the time the sun peeks over the mini-mall.

Bogosian and Linklater mine this soul-deadening territory with acerbic social satire (check out Pony’s earnestly inane folk-rock tune and Sooze’s pseudo-feminist monologue, which Bogosian slyly begins with the words “Fuck Oliver Stone!”) and laser-sharp characterizations, backed by the best small ensemble of relatively unknown young actors since Diner. Particularly affecting are Ribisi, whose mixture of intensity and self-doubt hit a little too close to home for this writer,

Zahn’s reprise of his uproariously unhinged stage role, and Posey (who has been in so many films lately she must be angling for this year’s Steve Buscemi Indie Ubiquity Award). Fans expecting another Dazed and Confused may be a touch disappointed – this is the least exhilarating of Linklater’s four pictures to date, which is not a slight on its quality by any means, merely proof of a darker color in the artist’s palette. The darkness fits, at any rate, rendering this one of the very few Gen X-ish pics worth sitting through, trading in easy pop culture references and enervated lethargy for genuine insight. In the immortal words of Gene Pitney that open the film (and close the excellent soundtrack, available on DGC), it isn’t very pretty what a town without pity can do. Especially if you’re twenty years old.