THE EDGE magazine | Film and DVD reviews | The Real Blonde (Tom DiCillo)

The Real Blonde
Tom DiCillo
USA, 1997, 105 minutes
Review by Gerald Houghton (1998)

Tom DiCillo's fourth film as writer-director, released twelve months on from his blink-and-you-missed-it midlife crisis comedy Box of Moonlight, is much the easiest sell of his short career. For one thing, it stars real stars. Not big stars, not like real films (he had Brad Pitt for Johnny Suede, but that was before even Pitt knew who he was). On the other hand he doesn't have previous indie-leads like John Turturro or Steve Buscemi either (although Buscemi cameos as a Madonna video director). The Real Blonde fronts Matthew Modine as Joe, a wannabe actor who lives with make-up artist Mary (Catherine Keener). If this thirty-something isn't yet over the hill then he's at least on the top looking down, and still he won't countenance doing ads or soaps. Not like his pal, the supernaturally superficial Bob (Maxwell Caulfield), who's just landed a plum role in big time soap Passioncrest, and who has a permanent hard-on for 'a real blonde'.

The Real Blonde, then, is a gentle satire of the almost bulletproof. But is it even possible to send up the already specious without lapsing into cheap caricature?

Part of DiCillo's response is to whip the problem in casting. Caulfield is a soap veteran, and you don't have to look far behind the facade to find the wailing ghosts of Dynasty and The Colbys. His performance is either heavy on irony or heavy on self-delusion. Likewise, Elizabeth Berkley, who shows up as Madonna's body double, is still paying the price for mortgaging her career to Verhoeven's catastrophic sleaze-a-rama, Showgirls. Daryl Hannah, one-time Hollywood It Girl, is all but unrecognisable, and movie madman Christopher Lloyd is staid and dignified as the head of the catering firm Joe waits for.

But this is DiCillo at his most approachable: gone is the surreal nastiness of Johnny Suede; the desperate bite of Living In Oblivion; even Box of Moonlight's magical whimsy. Set in New York, this is more Woody Allen than it is (DiCillo's former employer) Jim Jarmusch. Modine is at his most likeable (and that's a million miles from his ball of rage in Ferarra's The Blackout). Joe is a jumble of vulnerability and vanity, gazing enviously at his buddy's meaningless drift, but crucified at the thought of betraying Mary. When he sells out to that Madonna video, he mugs absurdly with shorts and pigeon chest and soon realises his mistake: he never will be Bob.

And Keener, while this is not the best part DiCillo's given her (she's in all his films), turns in maybe her best performance as the grounded but lacking-in-confidence Mary. Her self defence teacher (comic Dennis Leary, at his best) falls for her. Her shrink falls for her. And yes, we fall for her, too.

Ground-breaking The Real Blonde ain't, but in an era when most American comedy has sold its soul to the box office, that's not necessarily a bad thing. And just occasionally, in some of its musings on sexual politics or in Joe's slavery speech, DiCillo's script even bares some real teeth. •

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