Trees Lounge
No low-budget American picture of the past several years has been complete without Steve Buscemi's gap-toothed grin. The list of directors who have hired the man is a veritable who's who of US indie: Altman, the Coens, Tom Di Cillo, Jim Jarmusch, Robert Rodriguez, Alexander Rockwell, Querentino. It is only right and fitting, therefore, that when he finally gets behind the camera, Buscemi should hire himself for the lead.
Trees Lounge, which Buscemi also wrote, borrows heavily from both Jarmusch and seventies indie heavyweight, John Cassavetes. It's virtually plotless: Buscemi is Tommy, a thirty something alcoholic ex-mechanic who sleeps above and drinks in the titular Long Island bar. There's ex-girlfriend Theresa (Elizabeth Bracco) now pregnant by his old boss and ex-buddy, Rob (an excellent Anthony La Paglia), who sacked him for 'borrowing' money. There's seventeen-year-old Debbie (Chloe Sevigny), whose flirtatiousness and too-tight clothes we know will entice Tommy into trouble. And there are the regulars at the bar itself, hardened slaves to the bottle all.
Buscemi thankfully doesn't make the obvious over-ambitious mistakes of so many first-timers (and his own fledgling film-maker in De Cillio's terrific Living In Oblivion), shooting all of this with the same tired gaze pioneered by Jarmusch and, to a lesser extent, Hal Hartley. He has confidence enough in a snappy screenplay and the strength of his performers to let the tale tell itself. His cast are well up for it: Sevigny, of Kids infamy, is perfect as the knowing Debbie, as much leading as led, with a thick-necked Daniel Baldwin as her violently over-protective father. Mark Boone Junior is excellent as Mike, a wasted, slobbish but successful removals boss whose marriage is collapsing under the weight of his own inertia. And Bronson Dudley, a lizardic Robert Mitchum lookalike, is notable as the hard-drinking, monosyllabic barfly Bill. Buscemi is as good as ever and, as befits his almost-celeb status, this particular debutante gets to call in cameos from the great and good, not least the always watchable Samuel L Jackson, Mimi Rogers, and Seymour Cassel, the erstwhile Cassavetes regular who starred opposite Buscemi in Rockwell's In The Soup. He's the avuncular Al whose ice cream truck heart attack offers Tommy an exciting new career.
Trees Lounge works so well, however, because Buscemi knows his limitations. No big themes, gun play or car crashes on this budget; he identifies what he can do and does it the best he can. His film is neither judgmental nor patronising to its blue-collar world - funny without collapsing into all-out comedy - something it learns from Jarmusch. As such it retains a modest gravitas that makes the end, with its conspicuous lack of resolution, genuinely touching. On this evidence Buscemi could become as distinctive a talent behind a camera as he has in front of one.