Writer scrapes by in ’30s L.A.

  • By Robert Horton / Herald Movie Critic
  • Thursday, March 16, 2006 9:00pm
  • LifeGo-See-Do

Movies about writers are notoriously difficult to put over, especially since the “action” of a writer’s life largely consists of sitting at a keyboard and typing. But “Ask the Dust” is a game attempt, and an affectionate tribute to a cult author.

Spotty: Short on plot but heavy on atmosphere, Robert Towne’s adaptation of a cult novel fails to burrow into a writer’s brain, it still conjures up a heated past world

Rated: R for language, nudity

Now showing: Uptown 3, Seattle

It’s based on a novel by John Fante, whose work previously came to the screen in a curious 1989 film, “Wait Until Spring, Bandini.” Both novels took as their main character a struggling Italian-American writer, Arturo Bandini, who by all accounts was a thinly disguised version of Fante himself.

“Ask the Dust” is Robert Towne’s long-planned take on Fante’s world, and it’s an idiosyncratic, atmospheric film. It stalls at times, thanks to a low budget and a general lack of plot. Books about writers can put you completely inside the writer’s head; movies must dream up ways to visualize that world. Towne does a mixed job.

Bandini is played by Colin Farrell. The Irish actor’s charisma has eluded me in most of his films, but here he’s halfway toward an interesting performance, and he frequently nails the rhythms of 1930s speech.

“Ask the Dust” is set in the Los Angeles of the 1930s, where Bandini dreams of writing the Great American Novel but can’t come up with the rent for his fleabag apartment. Scarred by racial prejudice in his youth, he has a hefty chip on his shoulder and a complete ignorance of women.

In steps a Mexican waitress, Camilla (Salma Hayek), whose quarrelsome early scenes with the penniless Bandini are among the movie’s best. Their up-and-down love story is the point of the movie, even as Bandini grasps that it might be fodder for a novel someday.

He does have a strange interlude with a kind of troubled groupie (an intriguing brief performance by “Rent” star Idina Menzel), and there’s also room for an earthquake that hit L.A. in 1933.

Donald Sutherland plays Bandini’s dissipated neighbor, a nightmare vision of what Bandini might become if he can’t make it as a writer. There’s a terrific performance by Justin Kirk as Camilla’s dubious friend, another small role done exceptionally well.

Towne loves L.A. mythology, as he proved in his screenplay for “Chinatown” and his film “Tequila Sunrise.” This film succeeds best as a re-creation of a certain era of streetcars and funicular trams, with that hot sunlight beating down on everything. Weirdly, the whole picture was shot in South Africa, since the old Los Angeles is utterly vanished.

“Ask the Dust” is a pleasure to look at, and it’s offbeat enough to feel original. I don’t think it completely works, but there’s something personal and heated about it that sticks with me. Here’s hoping Towne gets busier with his California dreaming (just four directed films in 25 years) than he has been.

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