A burnt-out Swedish fast-food photographer (Wilson) working in Los Angeles dreams of making a film that deals with and addresses to explore people's suicidal tendencies, but for him to obsess about it seems not enough to give him any artistic inspiration. Out of the blue, a mysterious woman (Davidovich) decides to sweep him off his feet, promising him a road trip from L.A. to L.V. that would gift him that much-needed creative spark.
What director/writer Björne Larson has managed to set up a "PG-rated" piss-take (actually R-rated for the profanity) on the public's fascination with the prevalent reality-TV culture with an undercurrent of a cautionary tale for wannabes blinded by the glitz of the Hollywood mega-circus. The story and script hold well in putting the filmmaker's sentiments across if not only seeming to paint a veneer finish for the themes explored. But solid execution nevertheless, from cinematography, editing, the works. Just don't expect a spectacular depiction of Las Vegas because although the story predominantly revolves there, much of that never left on the cutting room floor, it seems.
There's also a brilliant juxtaposition of characters in the story that serves the narrative well. An excellent ensemble of North American and Swedish actors never hammed their way throughout a film despite streaks of eccentricity in the film althroughout. There's that naivete that Wilson exudes for the protagonist hungry for any poetic inspiration and gives a splendid departure from his previous performance a few years back in the Academy-Award-nominated foreign language film Ondskan. Davidovich meanwhile provides the assured, knowing entity in the film that guides the young man through the semiarid backwoods, an enthralling one that is unmistakably a gender-flip of the Dean Moriarty character in Kerouac's seminal novel and the definitive roman à clef, On the Road.
Props also to Larroquette as the wannabe celebrity psychologist having difficulties dealing with an uncooperative, rebellious teenage daughter, and Germann, his assistant, acting in his best interest to facilitate their slide into reality-TV stardom. Together with the shrink's patients: Skarsgård, who looks like a tall and beefed-up Julia Roberts with all that wig and make-up, and Benz, a washout young mother, who were both graced with the ineptitude in trying to off themselves, both carrying just that right amount of endearing qualities for their respective clingy characters. As the incompetent chauffeur but doting father to his daughter, Fares' character suffers from being yet another two-dimensional character too many for the film. He could have at least benefited from a few more lines of back-story dialogue, all to complete the cocktail mix of clashing personalities. It's just a few let-downs in the film that further cements this film's place in the cinematic world as a gateway drug for cinematic works like, On the Road, Easy Rider, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or Thelma & Louise.
The world could never not have any use for films with these kinds of stories, a watered-down version it may be or one can say derivative of the classic road movies, it's always of use for those who want a gradual measured descent in exploring such hard-hitting issues, the hard-to-swallow ones which always need the grittiness to keep it afloat. So, as always, forewarned is forearmed.
My rating: C-plus.
