Ask the Dust

Colin Ferrell, Salma Hayek

Paramount, 2006

If you just read my previous post then you can probably discern that I was watching this movie at the time. Yes, Salma coughs slightly before midway through the movie. And [SPOILER ALERT] dies oh so beautifully/tragically toward the end.

At least that's what the movie wanted you to feel. But it never enticed you to feel it.

Basically, it's a tepid movie. It has the hard-boiled feel of 1930's writer trying to make it in LA, and along the way there are slightly interesting characters who are never fully developed (Donald Sutherland is the best example as the old homosexual who not only symbolizes the slow agonizing death of dreams in LA but in some strange way also symbolizes the tough-as-leather survivor - actually, now that I think about it . . . I think HE coughs and doesn't die. hmm. May have to rethink my theory)

The narrator's name is Arturo Bandini, which I seem to recall as the line from a song by Cyndi Lee Berryhill on her first album "Who's Gonna Save the World?" back in the late 80's, but since that's a 20 year old memory, it may not be completely accurate. However, it seems so familiar, and I can hear that voice mentioning that name, and I remember when I was listening to the album thinking that she had just slapped the name of one of her friends into the song, but now, with this character named that, I was thinking that perhaps Arturo Bandini was a real writer and that this movie is loosely based on his biography, but the credits say that its based on a novel by John Fante, so I'm fairly confused as to whether Bandini is real or fictional. That will involve more research.

Unless one of you, my doting fans, would like to post some information to enlighten me. (doing the research for me, in a sense. Thanks!)

All in all, Ask the Dust is something you can miss. Well, ok, (and please don't let my wife slap me for this!) it's worth it just to forward the movie to the part where Salma goes skinny-dipping in the ocean -

.niiiiice!


VG






P.S. I've been thinking all day that maybe I was too critical of Ask the Dust. There were some good points to it: namely, the way that it showed the overall racism of America, even though LA was then (as now) full of different races. However, the desire to be "white" is what holds these characters back from being fully honest with each other, and it's the pressure to be white that forces them together. There's also a scene with a minor character that is actually very touching and sad - in that she is so desperate for affection that she is willing to enter into a fantasy for Bandini that she is "the Mexicana" (i.e. the land that is now LA) and he the "America" come to ravish her.

and the voice-over's not all that bad, either.

OK, I feel better now.

VG