After reading 2011’s “Imperial Bedroom”, I am as big a Brett Easton Ellis fan as I have ever been, bigger. He can do no wrong in my book. His ice cold tales of excess among the West Coast haves and have nots on the fringe of the movie business and the drug business and the escort business and some place where everything is up for grabs.
I loved it in “Less Than Zero” and I loved it all the way along to “Imperial Bedroom” and I loved “The Canyons” because whether Ellis loves his creenplay, or hates it, or whatever, it has his DNA all over it. It is all money and disaster and more money and disaster with porno star James Deen as a Trust Fund kid who wants to show Daddy he is using his wealth responsibly by producing a movie (Yeah, well I didn’t write it) and Lindsay Lohan, who looks truly horrendous, as Deen’s girlfriend who is getting her ex-boyfriend (Nolan Gerard Funk) a role in the movie.
The entire mood of the movie, directed by Paul Schrader, is BEE 101: the road goes on forever, the expensive mansions are gorgeous, the sex is loose and easy and the guy with the money is a nutcase. Deen might not be a great actor but he handles his chores well and whyile he might lack intimidation he is still off putting… not quite all there. He is worrying.
Lindsay Lohan is just bizarre. Apparently, it was all one takes and out as she refused to do two takes, fireworks and tantrums on the stage, you know the full Marilyn Monroe . And her performance is a trainwreck, barely a shadow of whatever she was in “The Parent Trap” and when the two guys say they are crazy about her, you have no clue as to why. But there is something fascinating about it, it is like a reality show or something and it seems to validate every lethargic sick of it smudge sex blahdom Brett has on his mind.
Schrager, who wrote the screenplay for “Taxi Driver” seems thoroughly miserable to be there and James is druggy and dazed and the former X-Men (he was the kid I think) and Glee performer looks great bit not the innocent his role requires.
In the end, if all it is is 90 minutes in the folds of Brett’s brain, it’ll do for me.
The music is nothing much but Dum Dum Girls?
Coming Down
Written By Dee Dee
Performed By Dum Dum Girls
Courtesy Of Sub Pop Records
Fear
Performed by A Place To Bury Strangers
Written by Oliver Ackerman and Dion Lunadon
Courtesy of Dead Oceans By
Arrangement with Bank Robber Music
Love, French, Better
Performed By Gold Zebra
Written By Jean-Phillippe Richard & Julie LaFontaine
Courtesy of Visage Musique