BACK AGAINST THE WALL (director/writer/editor/producer: James Fotopoulos; cinematographers: Dennis Best/John Wagner; cast: Martin Shannon (Levey), Michael Wexler (Vince), Debbie Mulcahy (June), Ernie E. Frantz (Ed); Runtime: 94; MPAA Rating: NR; Facets Multimedia; 2002)
"An odd drama set in the world of lingerie models and bar dancers in the Midwest that held my interest precisely because it didn't try to."
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
An odd drama set in the world of lingerie models and bar dancers in the Midwest that held my interest precisely because it didn't try to. Prolific underground Chicago filmmaker James Fotopoulos's ("Migrating Forms"/"Zero") bleak depiction of the ratty existence of his featured marginal characters is shot in an appropriately dreary black-and-white, and its lack of linear logic left me with the crazy feeling that life for his forlorn characters is all about not fucking up their solitude. It's commendable for being so obsessive and personalized a work, as it takes an honored place in my radical heart as a film that does not bow to convention. Into the film's mix is thrown a tale about an indifferent love affair, an involvement with gangsters, and the exploitation of a freakish character or two or three. There's a strange sense of artistic merit to the many dissolving shots of despair and an even stranger sense of comedy in watching these diverse characters try to get real and exist by the skin of their teeth. This is what guerrilla filmmaking should aspire to. "Back" is only meant for a more daring cult audience and will have little appeal to the multiplex theater crowd, who will always shun films that try to say something that is not apparent.
This is a story told in three chapters. The first part begins by tracking a passionless relationship between a couple of opposites. Beefy, middle-aged, morose, anti-social, Levey (Martin Shannon), sits up in bed while reading and waiting for his young lingerie model live-in girlfriend, June (Debbie Mulcahy), to come home from working in the Funhouse -- that's a bar where she dances in a fashion show in her lingerie. But he remarks in the slow-method he has of talking like a robot that she's really a stripper. He is a paranoid, suffering from a severe case of jealousy, as he coldly questions all her movements away from him in his chilling monotone voice that is blunt and pointed. From their meaningless conversations, it is hard to imagine why they are together. He is an avid chess player, has the ability to read books at an enormously fast clip and seems abnormally adjusted to his cramped nondescript apartment lined with cardboard boxes. But he suffers from seizures where he blacks out and has no memory of such events, and appears to be going loony. He's a bum who has hit the skids. While she's intent on modeling for him a number of short nighties and asking his opinion on which ones he likes, as she tries to be upbeat to balance his depression and keep this pointless relationship going.
On one occasion he questions her about his trucker friend Ed (Ernie E. Frantz) and his visit to see her dance at the Funhouse. Ed's a grotesque looking short, obese man who doesn't appear to have a neck and has complained that the guys at work mock him by saying he has "woman's hands," as the men workers also sing a song in a high-pitched girlie voice about them. Levey laughs it off and says "that's life."
By chapter two, June has left Levey, who has probably cracked-up. She is now with the peppy but sleazy owner of the Funhouse, her new live-in boyfriend, Vince (Michael Wexler). They show up in each other's arms at a rustic farmhouse owned by an elderly, grey haired man named David. His companion is a much younger blond named Laura, who looks like a stripper. The hosts also seem like an odd couple, and their antique decorated place feels like it could be a front for a cathouse--though that was never confirmed. June's temporary happiness in this relationship is short-lived, as Vince is called outside by some gangsters and is worked over as he evidently owes them money. But he refuses to tell her why. Later in the bar, June is costumed in a cowboy outfit and is snorting lines of coke with some of the other costumed girls in the dressing room. Before going onstage to do either a live porno performance or make a porno film she gets a visit from Vince, who gives her a necklace as a present.
In the final chapter, a few years have elapsed and Ed has taken ill and now resides in an almost permanently inebriated state in a dumpy motel room. He has quit work and is cared for by an unnamed woman. He has frequent visitors with whom he does drugs and several prostitutes, including one who might be as young as 13, come around to provide sexual favors. He then gets a surprise visit from an unrecognizable June, wearing a white plastic doll's mask, who tells him about the gangsters who messed up her face and how she had to have plastic surgery. Ed tells her that Levey created his own language when in prison and died there a few years back. She then unmasks with her back to the camera and what she looks like is left to the viewer's imagination and to Ed's discretion. Since the implication is that they are both now grotesque, this could be a happy ending as Ed invites her to stay and she doesn't say no.
It's a haunting vision of discontented underground types who can't fit into the mainstream. But the idlers share with other truth searchers a desire to make sense of life. Back Against the Wall is an experience that is hard to come to terms with except through feeling it, as it does not rely on plot development to get over on. It is a sinister film that strongly hints that it relishes creating a new type of film experience, as it uses prison (society) as a metaphor and with a precise and uncompromising film language it hopes to open up some more doors in how to get at a shadowy reality -- as it underlines the need to discard rationality and have only the emotions exist. It is progressive filmmaking, taking a step out of the mold so that it doesn't become trapped in the medium. Hopefully, Fotopoulos will continue to grow and his shadings will continue to gain depth.
REVIEWED ON 3/6/2003 GRADE: A
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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