Screen Scene
[1995. Directed by Mike Figgis. Cast: Nicholas Cage, Elisabeth Shue, Julian Sands. United Artists. 112 mins.]
Who said a love story has to be romantic? Granted, Hollywood love stories have to be good to survive their box office competition. But romance has always been optional when it comes to the big screen. Unless you're aiming for a fairy tale along the lines of Sabrina or Pretty Woman, romance can unglue a good love story faster than any other form of inconvenience.
That's why the superior love story is something to cheer about. They just don't come around that often. Perhaps like love itself, these films are always promising more than they can deliver.
By being a love story that is decidedly unromantic, Leaving Las Vegas seems like the real thing. Indeed, the film is so unsettling as a romance, one almost feels like ordering a round in the house for its star-crossed lovers.
There's no doubt that Ben Sanderson would....
As played by Nicholas Cage, Sanderson is a cipher of the most agreeable sort. He's a witty screenwriter so totaily dedicated to his craft of creative alcoholism that his respect, his job, and his life fall by the wayside of the perfect apéritif.
Rather than give us a hint of the demons plaguing Sanderson - if indeed any demons do plague him - we're left with a post-modernist day after. For existentialism is a bit too bleak for this sort of mischief-making. As Ben reminisces at one point, he's not sure if he lost his wife because of his drinking or if he started drinking because he lost his wife.
It's this sort of gnomic understatement that tells us Ben is a dedicated party hound. And does he ever make the most of what time is left.
It's perhaps a measure of our times that Las Vegas has now replaced New Orleans as the place where one goes to die. 'Orleans' religiosity has given way to the jump-cut flash edit ennui of losing it all in the heart of the desert. This is why Ben Sanderson travels to this gambling Mecca with all the resolve of an intemperate lemming heading off a cliff.
By contrast, Sera (Elisabeth Shue), the temporary girlfriend Ben meets in Vegas, seems to have dropped in from another screenplay. She's modernism wrapped in a silk package. Not exactly tortured by her choice of lifestyle as much as seemingly dazed by it all, Sera doesn't have much of a backstory. She's simply fleeing from her misanthropic Latvian pimp (Julian Sands) who's tailed her from the west coast. Needless to say, Ben's a good-humor guy compared to this heavy-handed knife-wielding thug.
Equally needless to say, Ben and Sera fall heedlessly - if not also implausibly - in love. After all, fate has a mysterious way of throwing lovers together.
No matter. Sera vows to stick Ben out to the bitter end. Not that it's so bitter early on...and not that the end is out of sight She's just a working girl and he's drunk all the time. It's through the prickles of this delicate tension that they find themselves soulmates.
Leaving Las Vegas would have us believe they're unlikely soulmates, but this isn't really the case. Sera has the considerate prescience to give Ben a hip flask as a (literal) going away present. And Ben finally calls her to his death bed so they can consummate their relationship to the soulful strains of Alain Bernardin's "You Turn Me On."
Were it not for Mike Figgis' alternating touches of bathos and pathos, Cages' alternating stages of levity and abandon, and Declan Quinn's inspired cinematography, Leaving Las Vegas would be a dreadful experience. Perhaps it is a dreadful experience. But there's also something to be said for being a good sport in love and war.
For Ben's nothing if he's not a good sport. In fact, he handles his relentless demise as sportingly as possible. Wouldn't it just be a wonderful life if every self-destructive personality should die so redeemed in the clasp of a dedicated lover?
------------------------------
RUBY IN PARADISE [1993. Directed by Víctor Nuñez. Cast: Ashley Judd, Todd Field, Bentley Mitchum. October FilmsRepublic Pictures Video. 114mins.]
Entering Chambers Beach Shop seeking offseason employment at the beginning of Ruby in Paradise, Ruby Gissing has the look of a survivor. The tourists' bric-a-brac lining the shelf makes it clear that she's a member of that any of the unemployed with no job training and fewer prospects.
Having escaped from the Tennessee hills to Panama City, Ronda because her family once vacationed there, Ruby has a soft-spoken nature; but she also has the equally fierce grit to succeed beyond what she has known. The fact that Chambers Beach Shop is a step up from that past is enough to tell us what kind of paradise Ruby's life is.
Independent filmmaker Victor Nuñez has crafted a masterpiece out of the minute details of Ruby's coming of age. As played by 1 993 Oscar nominated Ashley Judd, each stage of Ruby's future is firmly etched on her face as she goes through the tribulations of finding, losing, and regaining her modest utopia And the emphasis here is on modest because Ruby doesn't seemingly know any better than what she has earned.
Her wood frame bungalow is located next to working-class neighbors and Indian emigrants. Her sole friend, Rochelle Bridges (Allison Dean), works at Chambers during college breaks. And that boss, Mildred Chambers (Dorothy Lyman), runs her little empire with strict rules. The most important of which is not fraternizing with her son, Ricky (Bentley Mitchum).
The first rule to be broken is, of course, the first in the company's rule book. Ricky takes advantage of Ruby's loneliness. But by refusing to render to events, she finds another boyfriend in salesclerk Mike McCasin (Todd Fields).
This humble triangle plays itself out in the most understated of fashions. Nuñez, who wrote and directed the film, equally lays his cards on the table in a leisurely fashion. The result is a story whose wise tenderness is of an unassuming sort.
Ruby in Paradise works because its quiet strength lies in one of the most accomplished performances by a leading lady in some number of years. Ashley Judd is revelatory of acertain kind of private personality. The self-reliant young lady she portrays is a quite likable and good person.
Judd's youthful woman unfolds before the audience with the wary mature assurance of someone who's already seen a little too much of living. Each of her emotions rings true and it's to Judd's credit that we become absorbed in her quest for a better place.
The coming-of-age genre is one of the most notorious quagmires in film history. Both Rebel Without a Cause and Fast Times at Ridgemont High are notable for the number of bad imitations that followed them. In particular, love stories of this sort have rarely succeeded. Warner Bros.' early 1960s post-teen tearjerkers - A Summer Place and Parrish - doomed the genre to a teen-aged death.
Nuñez succeeds because he's apparently a true believer of kindness. By grounding Ruby in an off-season resort town, and by giving her such modest expectations, he's made a virtue of a milieu that's rarely seen in feature films. His characters' working-class backgrounds are similar to John Sayles' low-keyed characters in The Return of the Secaucus Seven.
That Nuñez pulls off his wager with the same folksy flair as Sayles is enough to raise a cheer in a certain section of today's movie audience. But what raises Ruby in Paradise above even this enviable independent film status is Ashley Judd's self-assured performance.
Ruby's vision of paradise may not be one that most of us would want to cali home. But Nuñez and Judd both seem to want to tell us sometimes paradise is just where you find it.