Steve Buscemi (1996)
Steve Buscemi played Mr Pink in Reservoir Dogs yet his wardrobe in some of his best roles since, here and in Ghost World, makes me think of him as a different kind of Mr Brown. This was Buscemi’s first feature as a director (he also wrote the screenplay) and, although he’s made three more since, it’s still the best known. I can’t fault Wikipedia’s synopsis of Trees Lounge:
‘The film follows Tommy Basilio (Buscemi), a 30-year-old alcoholic and fixture at the local bar, Trees Lounge, who begins to float after losing his girlfriend and his job as a mechanic. He continues and amplifies patterns of self-destructive behavior, to include a romantic relationship with a friend’s teenage daughter ([Chloë] Sevigny).’
The storyline may be slender but Trees Lounge is a nice film. Buscemi writes excellent naturalistic dialogue (although some of the scenes may well be improvised). He’s especially good on the structure of arguments: an exchange between Tommy’s ex-girlfriend Theresa (Elizabeth Bracco) and her boyfriend Rob (Anthony LaPaglia) is a particular highlight. There are some good one-liners too. When Tommy is trying to justify his romance with the teenage Debbie to his brother, he makes light of it by saying, ‘We’re just behaving like a couple of high school kids, and the brother replies, ‘She is a high school kid’. Debbie’s father Jerry (Daniel Baldwin) finds out and beats Tommy up. Back at Trees Lounge (in spite of the plural there seems to be just the one tree outside), Tommy explains that Jerry drew his own conclusions about the relationship. ‘Looks like he drew a conclusion on your head,’ observes a man at the bar.
The atmosphere and texture of people drinking hopelessly are perfectly observed and a fine, eclectic selection of songs, mostly played on the jukebox in the bar, ranges from the Inkspots to incongruous, positive-thinking anthems like ‘Hold Your Head Up’. Trees Lounge looks like a work in progress – it’s under-dramatised and, because Buscemi has to wind things up more definitely, the ending seems a little forced. But it’s a real strength of the film that a main reason for its seeming unfinished is that you get so quickly interested in the characters and there isn’t the scope for developing them as much as you’d like. The whole cast is first rate. It’s a shame that – except for Buscemi, Samuel L Jackson, Anthony LaPaglia and Chloë Sevigny, who has a lovely, tantalising innocence here – not more has been seen of them (by me anyway) since Trees Lounge. I particularly enjoyed watching Carol Kane, who looked to have a big career ahead of her in the mid-1970s, and who plays one of the Trees Lounge staff. Seymour Cassel has a good cameo as Tommy’s Uncle Al, whose ice cream van Tommy takes over driving after Al dies of a heart attack. There’s also an astonishing looking old man who sits propping up the bar and staring into the camera, the spirit of fully-achieved alcoholism. (I missed the name of the actor playing him, who, because he looks so remarkable, is actually a little disappointing on the rare occasions the character speaks.) When the old man is eventually taken into hospital, it’s Tommy who takes over his seat in Trees Lounge.
11 July 2010
