US
Abel Ferrara
When we watch a film, half the time spent watching is time spent
in the dark. While the print moves through the gate each
twenty-fourth of a second, we sit in total darkness and only
'persistence of vision' tricks us into ignoring the black bits in
between each frame.
Likewise, most upbeat, mainstream movies are about tricking us into forgetting the blackness, the bleakness of life outside the theatre. The films of Abel Ferrara will have no truck with this escapism - his characters are always confronting the blackness either within themselves (Driller Killer, Bad Lieutenant, Dangerous Games aka Snake Eyes, The Addiction) or that plus an even blacker, crueller world ready to gobble them up (Ms.45 aka Angel of Vengeance, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The King of New York). Ferrara's new film, The Blackout, is his latest confrontation with the dark side, this time literalised in the form of central character's (possibly) murderous blackouts. Appropriately enough, the film is also about people in the film business whose job it is to deal in blackness and light.
'It's about that space. I mean, what is a blackout? I've never had one, so for me it's a bit of the 'Oh, I forgot routine,'' says Ferrara, suggesting how fine the line might be between amnesia and lying. Honesty is a rare but precious thing in the Ferrara film universe, so expect the truth to be twisted and elusive in The Blackout. In it, Matty (Matthew Modine) is a strung-out, famous film star fixated with his former girlfriend Annie (Beatrice Dalle). While partying with a teenage waitress named Annie 2 (Sarah Lassez), Matty has the first of many blackouts to come. The story resumes 18 months later. Matty is happily recovering from his drug problem and with a new girlfriend (Claudia Schiffer), but he's troubled by nightmares that suggest he may have murdered someone. Matty travels to Miami to find out the truth. There, in the sun-drenched southern city (an unusually tropical locale for New Yorker Ferrara), Matty uncovers the mystery which involves Annie and his shady friend Micky (Dennis Hopper).
At times, The Blackout seems like a drug-soaked adaptation of Emile Zola's tale of prostitution and destitution, Nana. Would it be giving things away to hint that the film also owes a strong debt to Hitchcock's Vertigo?
'It's about obsessive love,' Ferrara insists, an intimate theme he's only rarely explored lately, given the solipsistic nature of most of his central characters. Visually, the film is also marked by a departure from Ferrara's usual sombre, night-soaked scenography, bleached into the ultimate in black-and-white austerity for The Addiction. Instead, The Blackout explores the peculiar lush colours of Miami at midday. And like Dangerous Game, The Blackout segues between video footage and film stock as the story demands. Ferrara is excited about the freedom video offers and, for a director, is refreshingly unsnobby about it: 'You've got to confront the fact that a lot of people are going to see the film on video. Thank God for video cassettes and video stores and, God forgive me for saying it, Blockbusters. I know how few people see a movie in a movie theatre now.'
The Blackout is the first film Ferrara has made in some time without his usual collaborator, screenwriter Nicholas St John, whose obsessive, Manichean Christian morality so informed Ferrara's most recent work. Instead, Ferrara called on the services of Marla Hanson and Christ Zois to flesh out his original concept. 'I don't really write - it will put you round the bend faster than anything.' He stresses that the story evolves over the entire film-making process, from script stage right up to final editing.
Asked if the film is finally finished or if he might cut anything out before its screening in Cannes, Ferrara laughs: 'No, we might add something!' Is he happy with the way the film's turned out? 'Happy?' he replies, 'What's happy? Did you see Body Snatchers?' Fast fade to black...Leslie Felperin
Prod Co: MDP Worldwide
Producer: Edward Pressman
Dir: Abel Ferrara
Scr: Marla Hanson, Christ Zois, Abel Ferrara
Ph: Ken Kelsch
Art Dir: Ren Blanco
Cos: Melinda Eshelman
Ed: Anthony Redman
Cast: Matthew Modine, Claudia Schiffer, Dennis Hopper, Beatrice Dalle, Sarah Lassez
Running Time: 100mins
Int Sales: MDP Worldwide
