Lonesome Jim

Date posted: Sun, 01/06/2008 - 3:52pm

Year:	2005
Director:	Steve Buscemi
Cast:	Casey Affleck, Liv Tyler, Kevin Corrigan, Mary Kay Place and Seymour Cassell
Rating:	A
Reviewed by:	Paolo Cabrelli

Jim (Casey Affleck) is a depressive and disillusioned young man who, after deciding he can't make it on his own in New York as a dog-walker, moves back to the parental home. Straining under the desperate affection of his mother, he's saved from his dysfunction and despair by a bright local woman (Liv Tyler) and her son, who sees him as a father figure.

Steve Buscemi returns here to Trees Lounge territory, and that's no bad thing. The creaking familiarity and ennui of small town life is portrayed with the kind of sincere contradiction of affection and revulsion that boredom can inspire. At its best, the film is an emotionally engaging and moving portrait of a lost man, unsure of himself and suspicious of anyone who might be foolish enough to offer him even a stale crumb of kindness. The family scenes, particularly those in which the brilliant Mary Kay Place dotes blindly on her loser son, are reminiscent of the achingly uncomfortable Buffalo 66. Casey Affleck makes for a less dynamic but more human presence than the volcanic Vince Gallo.

The muted tones and worn scenery paint a picture of lives at once under-lived and over-used and the contempt with which Jim surveys the past is that of a man unable to accept the present he has construed for himself. The key scene in the film, and, oddly, one of the funniest, shows Jim goading his brother, Tim (the sack-like Kevin Corrigan), over the paltry life within which he has settled, claiming that he cannot believe he hasn't killed himself. Horribly, that's exactly what Tim tries to do by driving into a tree that very afternoon. Lacking the courage to act himself, Jim is left feeling even more inadeqate.

Caring for the comatose Tim is Anika (Liv Tyler), a nurse and single mother seemingly keen on retaining her dreams of romance. In Jim she discovers a spark of decency and honesty that even he had thought long gone. It is one of the successes of the film to see this intriguing relationship blossom quite naturally, with bad sex and sweet moments in equal measure. Anika's son Ben is desperate for a father and he latches onto the apprehensive Jim with a needy nakedness that is at once frightening (as you know Jim will screw this up) and full of optimism (as you hope, like Ben, that Jim might actually pull himself together). Inevitably, along the way, Jim lets the family down, apparently unable to deny his egotistical self-loathing long enough to consider his future and the chance of happiness that is tentatively being offered to him. So used to spurning and avoiding, Jim fails to understand what is required of him and his dreams of running away to New Orleans lack any sense of responsibility or realism in light of the ready-made family (Anika and Ben) that he insists should come with him.

Affleck imbues Jim with an emotional hesitancy and reluctance that has since served him very well (most notably in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). His performance here is both convincing and original, a little like Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, pinned back by his own estimation of himself and the oppressive relationships he cannot seem to buck. Somewhere around the second third of the film the audience can anticipate the crux that will define the character of Jim and the film itself. Ultimately, will he be able to shed his anxieties and fears and, I guess, be a man? Up until the final moments Buscemi balances the film perfectly as we genuinely cannot tell which way this witty, charming, infuriatingly cowardly dreamer will hop.

Strangely, since this wonderful film, Buscemi seems to have pulled back, misfirring with Interview (2007) and jobbing through numerous episodes of 'The Sopranos'. Presumably the director finds it hard to get funding for these ventures. It's a pity because in Trees Lounge and Lonsesome Jim he has brought to the screen the kind of inward-gazing independent cinema his obvious inspiration, Cassavettes, would be proud of.