Ray Pride

It took over a week and several drafts, but I think I’ve finally found a more moderate tone than the one I began with in describing the latest movie from writer-director Tom DiCillo.

"Delirious" (2006) is one the worst movies I’ve ever sat through, at least one that was compounded by someone old enough to shave, and should be recommended only to connoisseurs of abjection. It’s so bad, I’ve got a 3,000-word draft of this review filled with insults that still does not do justice to the rank incompetence, cultural ignorance and sullen lack of comedy on display. There are positive reviews of "Delirious." They are wrong. DiCillo’s latest, in a career littered with dolorous work, offers an insult to the merely incompetent of the world.

The 53-year-old former cinematographer, whose best work is the short that constitutes the opening of "Living in Oblivion," has only gotten worse with movies like "Double Whammy" (2001) and "The Real Blonde" (1997). In "Delirious," there’s little craft. A lot of shots are inexplicably out of focus, and the second front-end credit of this finished picture (self-distributed by its financier) announces that it was produced "in asscociation" [sic] with another producer, but it doesn’t know its "asscociation" from a pothole in the street.

Vainglorious? Incurious? Ignominious? This slab of decidedly uncool wannabe critique of shallow hipsterism posits Steve Buscemi as Les Gallantine—he says "more of Les!" more than once—as a Manhattan paparazzi slightly less attractive than bacteria. Michael Pitt plays Toby, a moony homeless guy who Les takes on as an assistant whom he won’t pay and insults constantly. Their paths cross with a music star sometimes called "Instant Kharma" (Alison Lohman). Badly written with dreadful, aimless performances, "Delirious" is unattractive from almost every perspective, from costumes to hair to simple framing. Buscemi, looking ill and in his sixties, especially with stringy hair dyed black, is uncommonly aggravating as a delusional chatterbox, blurting nonsense and non sequiturs like "Hey! This is a collector’s item!" and "Rule Number One!" (It’s hard to shake the shots of Buscemi displaying black socks beneath spindly milk-pale calves.) The character’s not only a cockroach, but also a dreary, deadly dull one, and the turn toward attempted murder in the story is unfathomable. "Retarded" and "fuckin’ retarded" are the most consistent words out of Les’ mouth, unless you include his relentless, skittish, insistent homophobia. Buscemi’s husk of a character is so empty he wouldn’t have a pulse in real life. "Delirious" bumps into things like a newly blind cat. If the movie had followed the soul of Les to its logical conclusion, it would have been the story of a suicide. (I would have liked that movie, especially if he died quickly and brutally.)

Buscemi’s vanity-free appearance stands in stark contrast to that of the gaudily gorgeous, full-mouthed Pitt, yet you have to wonder DiCillo’s own esthetic. We see Les take headshots for the aspiring actor, and they’re not just shit, they make Pitt look bad. Okay, so Les is loud and deeply untalented. Why do we care? Pitt is pooch-lipped pretty, as he is in movies like "Last Days" and "The Dreamers," but DiCillo simply doesn’t get what those brimming puppy-dog eyes are capable of, and only a few quick flickers of smile come close to capturing his stoner charm. (A rock-video pastiche moment against a flower-petal-blue sky provides a rare moment of visual clarity.)

Lohman is exceptionally attractive despite the unpredictable lighting of her pale features from scene to scene, DiCillo lingering as she flexes long toes and tosses a curly mane. Bras of many colors are provided, including red, pink and superman blue, but not even the promise of successive, leering medium-close glimpses of the nice mole on the inside of her left breast warm the heart. Nice belly, too, he’ll have us know, especially in one soft-core interlude of modest fragrance. Still, Lohman in skimpies is no consolation for this severe waste of breath.

The time period is no era at all: Elvis Costello is considered a culturally au courant figure in DiCillo’s fairyland insensibility; K'Harma is said to have sold ten million copies of her most recent album. (That made me laugh out loud.) For a movie set in Manhattan, the cobbles of the meatpacking district and shots of limos driving past TGI Fridays are about the limit of local color, which is a disgrace when you see how beautifully chosen locations can enhance a movie, like Neil Jordan’s upcoming film largely set on New York streets, "The Brave One."

"Delirious" has one essential message to its stick figures and to any who manage to be caught unaware in its reflected light, one that I would cast right back. Which is? "Go Fuck Yourself."

"Delirious" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2007-08-28)

Also by Ray Pride

Under My Umbrella
Where’d the summer go?" a woman says, crashing into the room with a friend who’s got a matching soggy RedEye atop her hair
(2007-08-21)

Needing the Eggs
Part of the great, scary thrill of writer-director-editor-composer-star Julie Delpy's accomplishment with "2 Days in Paris" is how it would be less than disturbing if either of her thirtysomething, cross-cultural couple were to turn to the other and murder them suddenly, so vivid, vital, draining, exhilarating is their sustained comic contumely across a long weekend two years into a relationship
(2007-08-21)

Tip of the Week
Lynn Hershman Leeson's urgent, provocative, activist, needfully paranoid documentary, "Strange Culture," is one of the more innovative in memory, largely out of necessity
(2007-08-21)

Mclovin It
"Superbad" may have more profanity in it than any recent American movie; if you thought "Knocked Up" had its share of tender filth, you ain’t heard nothing yet.
(2007-08-14)

Tip of the Week
(2007-08-14)

Engineering This Fiasco
(2007-08-10)

Engineering This Fiasco
(2007-08-07)

Tip of the Week
(2007-08-07)

Life after Life
(2007-07-31)

Tip of the Week
(2007-07-31)

Somewhere Over the Rainbo
(2007-07-24)

The Odyssey
(2007-07-24)

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