American Perfekt
USA 1997
Reviewed by Danny Leigh
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
The American midwest. On her way to meet her sister Alice, Sandra Thomas is forced off the road by a green station wagon. Another driver pulls over and introduces himself as Dr Jake Nyman, a psychiatrist. On the toss of a coin, he agrees to give her a lift. The pair run out of petrol. The station wagon pulls up. Flipping the coin once more, Jake persuades Sandra they should ask the driver, an Englishman named Santini, for a ride. That night, all three book into the motel where Sandra is to meet Alice. Jake and Sandra discover Santini is a conman. Santini argues with Sandra before leaving with a local woman, Shirley. Jake promises Sandra that Santini will never insult her again. Sandra tells Jake she would rather die than be without him.
The next morning, Jake approaches Alice in a diner. Concluding that her sister will not be arriving, Alice accepts a lift from him. The station wagon forces them off the road before crashing. In the wreckage, Alice finds Santini, his tongue missing. He dies.
Alice returns to town, where a corpse has been found. Convinced it is her sister, Alice learns from Sheriff Frank Noonan that it is actually Shirley. Jake returns for Alice. They leave together but Alice discovers Sandra's body in the trunk of Jake's car. Alice offers to toss a coin for her own life. Using a trick coin she found near Santini's body, Alice convinces Jake to release her. Moments later, Jake realises what has just happened, but before he can give chase, he is killed when Frank's car crashes into his.
Review
Having spent nearly three years in limbo, lacking a distributor in either Britain or the US, Head Case screenwriter Paul Chart's debut feature shows all the signs of being subject to more than one trip to the editing suite. At least, that's what one hopes: there is little otherwise to explain how such an initially intriguing enterprise could so swiftly descend into disjunction and cliché. At the very moment Chart's juxtaposition of the ostensibly beatific Jake and the damaged, neurotic Sandra looks poised to segue into a revelatory middle act, it lurches into 15 minutes of (seemingly abridged) psychosexual melodrama. From there, after Sandra's unceremonious disappearance, it's all downhill fast into the hackneyed tropes of the most mundane serial-killer/woman-in-peril fodder.
Despite its welding together of disparate styles forming a road-movie chassis, American Perfekt never becomes a mischievous, genreless whole in the manner of Blood Simple or Wild at Heart (both of which Chart appears smitten with). Instead, viewing it is rather like seeing three unrelated shorts in quick succession, of which only the first is worth the effort. Nowhere is this retreat into the banal more pronounced than in the dialogue. At first, as Chart establishes his premise, his characters are gifted with dry asides, simultaneously naturalistic, illuminating and genuinely funny. ("Do you like music?" enquires the peerlessly nasal Thewlis, before answering his own question, "It's great, isn't it?")
Yet as the storyline becomes first confused then increasingly pedestrian, the cast's exchanges follow suit. The deadpan is displaced by the garishly lyrical ("He was pink and white and all the colours that you will never see. And he was my love," says Alice), before this in turn is dispensed with for the merely functional. By the time people are promising one another not to allow a third party to "ever speak like that to you again," you just know there will be a tongue going missing in the not-too-distant future.
All of which has the unfortunate consequence of rendering many of Chart's superficially engaging conceits hollow. The desert locale, for example, ultimately appears hand-me-down rather than eerily atmospheric, and the central motif of Jake Nyman's obsession with chance seems simply the product of one too many nights spent poring over David Mamet or Luke Rhinehart's cult novel The Dice Man.
Chart's shortcomings are, however, at least partially redeemed by his actors. Thewlis, in particular, attacks his somewhat insubstantial role with relish, while Robert Forster (cast here before he made Jackie Brown) delivers a fine performance of impressively reserved intensity. Or, more accurately, he does so until the debacle of the resolution, at which point all credibility is lost. Sadly, the same epithet could easily apply to the entire film. Perhaps one day a director's cut will restore some of the narrative integrity which presumably helped attract such a notable cast in the first place.
Credits
- Producer
- Irvin Kershner
- Screenplay
- Paul Chart
- Director of Photography
- William Wages
- Editor
- Michael Ruscio
- Production Designer
- Katherine Vallin
- Music
- Simon Boswell
- ©Mondofin B.V.
- Production Company
- Nu Image
- Executive Producers
- Avi Lerner
- Danny Dimbort
- Elie Samaha
- Boaz Davidson
- Trevor Short
- Co-producers
- Dawn Handler
- Andrew Schuth
- Associate Producer
- John Conway
- Executive in Charge of Production
- John Thompson
- Production Associate
- Mandy Branch
- Production Supervisors
- 2nd Unit:
- Jack Breschard
- Perri Chasen
- Production Co-ordinators
- Michael Mynatt
- 2nd Unit:
- Janet Pett-Davies
- Unit Production Supervisor
- Jack Breschard
- Unit Production Manager
- Eric Sindon
- Location Manager
- Max Sokolov
- Post-production Supervisor
- George Gale
- Assistant Directors
- Alan Terry
- Michael Abbot
- 2nd Unit:
- Mathew Eyrand
- Script Supervisors
- Donna Parish
- Genie Babcock
- 2nd Unit Continuity
- Arleen Beatty
- Casting Director
- Karen Elizabeth Rae
- 2nd Unit Director of Photography
- William Wages
- Special Effects
- Ron Trost
- Set Decorator
- Jonathan Weston
- Costume Designer/ 2nd Unit Wardrobe
- Florence-Isabelle Megginson
- Costume Co-ordinator
- Karri Mayo
- Key Make-up
- Dalia Sayday-Dokter
- Make-up/Hair/Special Effects Make-up
- Randy Westgate
- 2nd Unit Key Make-up/Hair
- Charlene Burris
- Titles/Opticals
- Title House
- Music Supervisor
- Douglas Brodoff
- Music Editor
- Christopher Sheldon
- Soundtrack
- "Vision (O euchari in leta via)" by Hildegard von Bingen, arranged/ performed by Richard Souther; "Lay It Down" by Michael Timmins, performed by Cowboy Junkies; "Twilight Time" by Al Nevins, Buck Ram, Artie Dunn, Morty Nevins, performed by The Platters
- Sound Design
- Dane Davis
- Sound Mixer
- Michael Emery
- Recording Supervisor
- Steven Brimmer
- Recording Mixers
- John Boyd
- Stanley Kastner
- Re-recordists
- Craig Cathers
- Jim Meier
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Christopher Sheldon
- Sound Editor
- Kini Kay
- ADR
- Recordist:
- Dana Johnson-Porter
- Mixer:
- Ron Bedrosian
- Foley
- Artist:
- Edward Stiedel
- Recordist:
- Dana Johnson-Porter
- Mixer:
- Ron Bedrosian
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Eddie Perez
- Al Goto
- Cast
- Fairuza Balk
- Alice Thomas
- Robert Forster
- Dr Jake Gordon Nyman
- Amanda Plummer
- Sandra Thomas
- Paul Sorvino
- Sheriff Frank Noonan
- David Thewlis
- Ernest Santini
- Geoffrey Lewis
- Willy
- Chris Sarandon
- Deputy Sheriff Sammy Goodall
- Joanna Gleason
- Shirley Dutton
- Jay Patterson
- Bernie
- Judson Mills
- Junior
- Rutanya Alda
- Gloria
- Paul Henry
- trucker 1
- Belinda Belaski
- Rita
- Jack Breschard
- trucker 2
- Nathan Legrand
- Freddie
- Sarah Bibb
- cashier
- Lisa Long
- maid
- Certificate
- tbc
- Distributor
- Blue Dolphin Film & Video
- tbc feet
- tbc minutes
- Dolby
- In Colour