Ask the Dust

I saw Ask the Dust yesterday. Had heard mixed things about it, but it interested me. I was mostly unimpressed, and give it a C-.

The writer and director is Robert Towne, best known for Chinatown, another film set in 30s L.A. He clearly in enraptured with the time and place, as the evocative setting is the strongest thing about the film. Colin Farrell is Arturo Bandini, an Italian-American from Colorado, who has come to L.A. with $150 and a copies of H.L. Mencken's magazine, American Mercury, with one of his stories published inside. When we begin the story, he's down to his last nickel, and he has orange rinds on his desk.

Eventually Bandini meets Camilla, a waitress at the local bar/buffet. She's in the classic Mexican spit-fire mode. Things begin rockily between them--Bandini is disgusted by the coffee, so he pours it all over the table. The two will continue to bicker and insult each other throughout their relationship and love affair. This is the crux of the film, and the crux of the problem with the film, as the two characters never seem to naturally mesh. Hayek's character, in particular, seems badly drawn, behaving to suit the script, rather than the other way around.

Farrell is fine. He's become something of a joke lately, what with Alexander and a sex tape, but he is believable as the cocky, struggling writer. I admired how he completely got rid of his Irish brogue. But the star of this film is the set design. Bandini's boarding house, a beach house in Laguna, a shack in the desert, and all of the other locations give the viewer almost tactile sensations of what the period was like. I just wish the story were that intriguing.