The Early Prime of Nancy Savoca, part 2 - DOGFIGHT (1991)

After True Love was a big winner at Sundance Nancy Savoca was given a shot at making a move for Warner Bros., a pretty big deal for a novice director.  That doesn't mean that the studio really gave her a shot, though - her second movie, Dogfight, was only released in two theaters (!) in the US and went direct to video in the UK, part of a long tradition of studios bungling a slightly off-centered movie's distribution and then calling the movie a failure as if they had nothing to do with it.  It's pretty unfortunate, as Dogfight is one of the best movie romances of the 90's and among the best performances for Lily Taylor and River Phoenix, the latter more precious due to his untimely death.

Set in San Francisco in the early 60's, Dogfight stars Phoenix as Eddie Birdlace, a listless young Marine about to be sent to Vietnam whose friends like to partake in "dogfights", group dates where each boy finds the ugliest girl they can ask out and take them to a dance club so they can vote on who's the biggest "dog".  The "winner" gets a pot of money and usually the girl gets a cut, so there are a few regulars to the "fight".  Eddie isn't one to back down from a challenge, so after running around for a while he comes across Rose (Taylor), a lonely, pacifistic coffee shop clerk, and sweet-talks her into going with her, though she has no idea about the fight.  She finds out about it from another "contestant" in the bathroom and is understandably angry.  However, during the course of the night Eddie has actually taken a liking to her.  After some awkward flirting they go on a long, winding date through San Francisco that same night, and as they grow closer their bond becomes deeper and stranger, revealing aspects of their personalities and stations in life that are both impossible to ignore and heavy with symbolic weight.

Whereas True Love was brash and bawdy, Dogfight is enormously tender.  Written by the unprolific Bob Comfort, the film uses the backdrop of Haight Ashbury at the cusp of Vietnam to explode a microcosmic romantic encounter to a hugely enveloping experience.  The conceit of Eddie having to leave the next day allows for events to play out almost in real time, and each new locale they visit is more wonderful than the last but another inch closer to a devastating departure.  The period reconstruction is unbelievable, as SF landmarks like City Lights Books rub shoulders with magical nooks and crannies, such as a basement filled with antique mechanical toys.  The performances by Phoenix and Taylor are stunning, arguably the best of their careers (but with Phoenix that's a hard claim to make, as there's about four or five "best" performances to choose from), each actor totally inhabiting their roles and creating fascinating opposites.  Savoca's direction lovingly draws out every detail from the sets, lighting and action without being overbearing, allowing the setting and story to take on a magic realist quality where anything can happen, and the magnified timeframe only helps that cause.  The mood has shifted from True Love to be both funny and quite sad, as the story is driven not only by circumstance but by its characters' deep-set insecurities and star-crossed worldviews, and it isn't afraid to follow the pair towards a quietly surprising, poignant conclusion, and leave it open-ended, to boot.  It's a brave and creative sophomore effort from an artist growing more and more into what could have been a modest icon in American cinema on par with what Alexander Payne would become later in the decade.

And the worst part of it is that nobody saw the thing.  Two theaters?  That's not enough to recoup expenses for a modern TV pilot, especially with an off-centered, small-scale movie like this.  But at least Dogfight got multiple DVD rereleases, which can't be said for Savoca's most daring and thought provoking film, Household Saints.  Stay tuned, Women's History Month.

~PNK

The Early Prime of Nancy Savoca, part 1 - TRUE LOVE (1989)

In my preparation for Women's History Month this blog cycle I realized that I couldn't think of too many female career movie directors.  There are a few big names, of course, most notably Kathryn Bigelow, Julie Taymor, Liliana Cavani and most hilariously Doris Wishman, but that's a pretty small list, especially considering that I can't stand to include Barbra Streisand in that list.  Other multi-film female directors have found fame but their careers have either crashed and burned (like Elaine May) or never really saw consistent fruition (like Jennifer Chambers Lynch).  In fact, there seem to be fewer women in film direction than in any other artistic field (aside from orchestral conducting, it would seem, as I could only think of one female conductor of international repute, Marin Alsop, and Wikipedia's list is only seven names long).  There's not a savory reason for this, especially considering that the rise of independent cinema in the 80's and 90's should have opened the door to a whole generation of female auteurs.  A couple of names did rise to the surface in that optimistic time, one being Allison Anders, whose Gas Food Lodging was a Sundance darling and her film Border Radio made it into the Criterion Collection.  Another, and the one I'm more familiar with, is Nancy Savoca, who won big time at Sundance in 1989 and made two more striking character dramas before fading into TV-directing obscurity.  This month V-f-t-P is going to celebrate all three of her early films, starting with the most financially successful of them, True Love.

Donna (Annabella Sciorra in her big-screen debut) and Michael (Ron Eldard in his big-screen debut) are getting married, and while they seem to be enthusiastic it's clear that the problems of modern marriage are both more present and more subtle than anything they could have imagined.  And that's pretty much it - True Love understands that the mounting frustrations and secret failings of young people hurtling into lifelong commitment is drama enough, as Donna and Michael's romance is threatened by nothing larger than themselves.  As it turns out, the hardest problems to overcome are the ones you consider essential parts of your character, and whether or not Donna and Michael are up to the challenge may be impossible to determine.

Starting out with the engagement party video (a somewhat recent invention at the time), True Love is as naturalistic and sympathetic as I've seen from a wedding movie since Rachel Getting Married.  Savoca uses the everyday problems of working-class New York Italian-Americans as a backdrop for a drama of modesty, not shying away from the combination of money problems, bad fashion choices and general crudeness (such as the side character who calls a rude driver both a "dicksuck" and a "suckhole").  Their culture, much stereotyped in movies but expertly dissected here, is as much to blame for Donna and Michael's problems as themselves, as Michael's malaise at the prospect of responsibility is both created and encouraged by the "boys will be boys" attitude prevalent amongst his circle of friends and, by extension, his male community.  Donna is no less problematic, as she is too quick to fall for gimmicky wedding concepts (like mashed potatoes dyed blue) and lets men use her as a doormat without coming up with alternatives.  The ingenious part of this is that Savoca is too smart to let either one of them be the "right" one in any given argument (aside from the ending), such as Michael turning down the idea of the ghastly dyed potatoes and Donna interpreting this as him being a backward drip, or Michael's reasonable request that Donna not meet him after the bachelor party lead to him making the colossal mistake of squealing off to Atlantic City to gamble away as much of his savings as he can get his hands on.  Their friends are no improvement - Donna's wear awful clothes and make jokes about sticking Michael's head in the oven, while Michael's are heinous enablers who seduce him into terrible decisions.  On top of this there are a number of hilarious scenes with odd side characters, like the guy who sells them the rings  and "Christ heads" wearing a bizarre v-neck sweater/t-shirt combo and a bachelor party filled with guys in their 60's falling asleep to ancient 8mm stag movies.  The writing manages a difficult feat in featuring wacky, cynical characters while still treating them with real respect, and as such True Love stays afloat where other movies would sink our hearts.

Annabella Sciorra would go on to prove herself an interesting and intelligent film presence in movies such as the dreadfully underrated What Dreams May Come; the close-examination material here requires acting of that caliber and she does a fine job for her big screen debut.  Simultaneously street-smart and woefully unprepared for life, Donna is a hard-edged modern woman with a mother's heart and over-tired eyes.  She spends the whole second half of the movie deeply embittered and is notable for movie couples in that she's the one who hits first in their fights, daring Michael to hit back.  Ron Eldard has had a bit less success but has remained versatile in small roles in movies like Super 8 and the frustrating near-success Delivered, and he's almost unrecognizable here as Michael, severely babyfaced and utterly oblivious.  Both actors take full hold of the comic and dramatic possibilities of the material, bouncing along the script and greatly aiding the flow while keeping your attention at all times.  The same can be said for every actor in the movie, featuring small-time icons like Aida Turturro and Vincent Pastore as well as a whole host of people I've never seen before but can't take my eyes off of.  This is all captured with Savoca's expansive and richly colored frame, showing a lot of confidence for her first time out and amplifying the emotional punch of every scene.  The cinematography allows colors to pop and flood the scenes and there's a lot of engaging tracking shots and fresh angles.  And the most essential win for her is the pacing, both measured and eager to follow the story wherever it may go.

I remember when The Break-Up came out and Vince Vaughan mentioned that any break-up has enough drama to carry a whole movie.  While I didn't like that movie too much I applaud the concept of really going for a seemingly simple story like that and proving that a movie can be engaging in simplicity.  True Love is a pretty simple story but it's so entertaining and wise that you couldn't care less.  It's no surprise that this was an audience and critic favorite at Sundance that year (winning the Grand Jury Prize) and it's a great movie to launch careers with - it has all the audience appeal and intelligence of a movie like High Fidelity well before the fact.  The best audience favorites are the ones that show us truths that we might not have considered but accept unhesitatingly, and True Love is wise enough to focus more on young love's hangovers than its celebrations, and the fact that, when it comes to love, we just don't know when to quit.

"You know, there's times when he does things like what he did last night and I wanna fuckin' kill him...then I see him." ~Donna

~PNK