Hey folks, Harry here... This is the Linklater flick that I still haven't seen. Dagnagup! Of course leave it to the italian brute to snab this sucker up.... Sigh... Alright... Here ya go....
Hey, Harry/Moriarty. Capone in Chicago here. Well, the Chicago Film Festival is in full swing, and the first of my two reports will be arriving on your door step soon. But before I attempt to tackle that, I wanted to let you know about a fun little event I attended during the festival that wasn’t actually part of the festival. Director Richard Linklater was in town for a couple screenings of his latest film WAKING LIFE. Since it is opening in Chicago shortly, I figured I’d skip WAKING LIFE to see other films that do not as yet have release dates in the U.S. and may never. However, early Saturday afternoon (with WAKING LIFE screening Saturday night), Linklater also attended a screening of his OTHER new film, TAPE, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, with a great Q&A after.
TAPE was actually shot on digital video during the lengthy animation post-production for WAKING LIFE. Linklater received a copy of an unproduced three-person play by Stephen Belber from Ethan Hawke right at the time when Linklater was being approached by a cable channel (I think he said Bravo, but I might have that wrong) to do a digital movie. After lengthy rehearsal, Linklater shot the film in six days with two cameras on one set.
The story of TAPE is deceptively simple: two old high school buddies, Vince and Johnny (Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard), meet in Vince’s a slightly run-down hotel room in Lansing, Michigan. It turns out that Johnny is a film director premiering his first feature at the Lansing Film Festival, and Vince is their to lend support as an old friend…or is he? As the two kill time in Vince’s hotel room, the conversation turns to a girl they both knew in high school named Amy. Vince dated Amy for quite some time, but the two never slept together. When they broke up just before the end of senior year, Amy slept with Johnny, or that’s how the story has gone for about 10 years. As Vince questions Johnny about the his one-night stand, he wonders aloud why the night never amounted to anything more. At first Johnny shrugs it off as a simple case of two people never clicking after a drunken night of stupidity, but it’s clear Vince knows different. As he relentlessly grills Johnny for details of the event, it turns out the sex not only rough but perhaps not even consentual. And to top it all off, Vince is tape recording their entire conversation, including Johnny vague confession of rape. Using the tape as a threat, Vince insists that Johnny call Amy right now and apologize for what he did.
Hawke and Leonard (two old friends since THE DEAD POET’S SOCIETY) are phenomenal in their verbal fencing game, and Hawke in particular has never been more menacing. At first we’re afraid of Vince’s potential for violence (apparently his most recent girlfriend dumped him because of his temper), but after he reveals he has taped Johnny’s confession, we fear for how he may use this evidence. Linklater brilliantly shifts our sympathy and allegiance from Johnny (the young director on the eve of a career high point) to Vince, who turns out to be a drug dealers and user. What we soon realize is that both men possess the same set of mental skills and are of equal intelligence, and neither can win in trying to one-up the other. I’ve never scene Ethan Hawke play such a manipulative character and he’s fantastic here. Clearly his previous working relationship with Linklater (in BEFORE SUNRISE, THE NEWTON BOYS, and WAKING LIFE) is paying off in TAPE. Leonard’s Johnny goes quickly from a deer in the Vince’s accusatory headlights to angry aggressor.
Oh, but that’s only the first part of the film. It turns out Amy (Uma Thurman) lives in Lansing, and Vince has invited her over for a reunion. She shows up as the two men are fighting over the tape. Vince says at first he wasn’t going to play her the tape, but seeing how angry Johnny has become, he feels he should. He’s deliberately tormenting Johnny, and whatever his motivations, he’s a first-class asshole. Amy enters the room surprised to see Johnny, but not horrified or pained in any way. She’s polite and friendly with both men, but is clearly surprised to see Johnny there. The pleasant chit chat soon turns more serious (courtesy of Vince), and after much discomfort, Johnny apologizes what’s he’s done to her. Don’t get me wrong, TAPE is great up to this point, but right here things get REALLY good. Amy insists that no rape took place, that she was madly in love with Johnny, and would have done anything to please him in high school. Instead of accepting her version of the events, Johnny insists that the rape took place (role reversal, anyone?) I don’t want to go any more into the story because things get very complex at this point, but I can warn you not to expect any clear answers in TAPE because there aren’t any, nor should there be. The film is about perception, guilt, jealousy, self-preservation, and I think even the truth may slip in occasionally. It’s easy to say that this is some of the best work for all three of these actors, and with each new film he makes, Ethan Hawke surprises the hell out of me. I saw TRAINING DAY a few weeks ago, and I was shocked at how much I liked him in that. His performance in TAPE is better because it’s tough to pin Vince down.
Linklater described TAPE to us as a date-rape comedy, and that’s not too far from the truth. You do find yourself laughing when Johnny repeatedly says to Amy, “I raped you!” and she says, “No you didn’t!” Much of the dialogue between the two male leads is rapid fire and as funny as you’d expect two old friends that know each other way too well to be. TAPE will probably get lost in the shadow of the much bigger films floating around right now; hell, it will probably get lost in the shadow of the technical wizardry of WAKING LIFE. But if you’re fortunate enough to have TAPE open near you, see it as soon as you can.
Capone (Click here to send me your roses and kisses and punches!!!)
Or see my collected review at this location just click on
Steve@theMovies
