TAPE (director: Richard Linklater; screenwriter: from a play by Stephen Belber/Mr. Belber; cinematographer: Maryse Alberti; editor: Sandra Adair; cast: Ethan Hawke (Vince), Uma Thurman (Amy Randall), Robert Sean Leonard (John Salter); Runtime: 83; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Alexis Alexanian/John Sloss/Anne Walker-McBay/Gary Winick; Lions Gate Films; 2001)
"The actors do justice to this potent and insightful script, filling the screen with explosive energy as they dig into their past shame with their own kind of dynamite."
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Richard Linklater's (Slacker/Waking Life/Dazed and Confused) edgy chamber drama Tape, is based on the three-character play by Stephen Belber. It's a talky dramatization shot in real-time and photographed with a handheld camcorder by both Linklater and Maryse Alberti, who capture the film's claustrophobic setting in a grainy but intimate manner on digital video. The Rashomon-like theme of who's telling the truth is played into a question of ethics and perceptions, as the filmmaker succinctly points out that objective reality is only subjective. There's also Brenda Lee's telling song at the film's conclusion: "I'm Sorry I Was Such A Fool."
Two supposedly close friends from their high school days, Vince (Ethan Hawke) and John Salter (Robert Sean Leonard), who have kept in touch since graduating ten years ago, meet in Vince's motel room in Lansing, Michigan. Vince is a slacker, small time drug dealer, and a volunteer fireman in Oakland (I thought they had a professional fire department), who has come to Lansing to help support his friend on what might be the most important weekend in his life. John is a smug, pretentious, aspiring filmmaker, who shot a film appearing in the Lansing Film Festival. He's hoping this will be his big career film break, and has invited Vince and his girlfriend to attend the one-time screening for a film he has worked on for the last two years. But Vince is alone and informs him that his girlfriend for the last three years has left him because of his violent tendencies and reckless behavior, which upsets John more than it does him. John, in a superior tone, lectures the beer guzzling and still immature Vince who is attired in boxer shorts, and tells him to get his life together--he's no longer a kid at 28.
As the sharp conversation between the two becomes more heated, it appears Vince is on a downward spiral and the better dressed and more polished John is heading upward. But it soon becomes apparent that Vince had other reasons for seeing John than what he lets on, as he's still troubled about what happened to the love of his life, his old high school girlfriend Amy Randall (Uma Thurman), who broke up with him and had a crush on John. Vince is trying to get clear in his jealous mind about an incident that happened one night, after he already had broken up with Amy, where John said he had sex with Amy when he was drunk at a party. What strikes him as odd, is that they never saw each other after that fling. Vince believes a date rape occurred and tries to get his friend to tell him exactly what happened. Vince is seething inside because he went out a long time with Amy and they never had sex, even though it was Amy's first relationship and he wanted so much to make love to her.
To loosen the stiff John up, Vince induces him to smoke pot. And, after much badgering and questioning of John's version, much like a prosecutor, John states that he coerced her verbally into having sex with him. The manic Vince then gets the awkwardly apologetic filmmaker to say he held her down and raped her. To John's astonishment he gets this confession on tape, which he threatens to give to Amy unless John apologizes to her. Vince also tells him that Amy is working in the town she went to college, Lansing, as an assistant district attorney; and, even though, he hasn't seen her for five years, he has invited her over to the motel. Amy enters the motel room at the film's 50 minute mark, and the three high school friends are confronted with facing themselves now and in their past while stuck in this small and unappealing room. The self-composed Amy and the chagrined John have different reasons and interpretations about what may--or may not--have happened, as the small-minded but crafty Vince massages his own feelings and tries to understand what each of them is saying that satisfies his own point of view.
The three actors do a marvelous job of working together and conveying their passions, hurts, and sense of being. They do this despite none of them being particularly sympathetic figures. Linklater's film is much in the same vein as what filmmakers and playwrights Mamet and LaBute are regularly doing, creating intelligent scenarios for adult audiences. The actors do justice to this potent and insightful script, filling the screen with explosive energy as they dig into their past shame with their own kind of dynamite.
REVIEWED ON 9/28/2002 GRADE: A-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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