Tape
Directed by Richard Linklater; written by Stephen Belber, based on his play; starring Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard and Uma Thurman
Unlike many contemporary filmgoers, I don’t mind chatty, talky films directed by Richard Linklater. In fact, I often enjoy them. For instance, I loved "Slacker" and was delighted by "Dazed ‘n’ Confused." I even welcomed "Before Sunrise," the story of two strangers roaming the streets of Vienna, exploring the city and each other. But when Linklater decided to imprison three exacerbating, indulgent and at times insipid characters in a depressing motor lodge in Lansing, Mich., even the chattiest and talkiest of tales eventually grew tiresome.
Based on Stephen Belber’s play, "Tape" begins ominously with Ethan Hawke (as Vince) anxiously traversing his motel room. Wearing nothing but pale blue boxer shorts – no doubt designed to accentuate his skinny-yet-doughy frame – he shotguns Rolling Rocks, drops for push-ups, and waits for his high school friend, Johnny, to arrive. Apparently Vince is in town from Oakland, Calif., where he works as a volunteer fireman and part-time drug dealer. He’s there for the premier of Johnny’s first film, which will debut at the Lansing Film Festival.
The minute Johnny arrives in the motel room, wearing pressed Levis and elegant leather shoes, the old friends begin to bicker: Johnny thinks Vince is wasting his life; Vince thinks Johnny is pompous and pretentious. After what appears to be a requisite amount of wrangling, Vince turns the conversation to his old high school girlfriend Amy (Uma Thurman), who happens to have settled in Lansing. It seems that after Amy broke up with Vince she had a one-night tryst with Johnny. Over the years Vince has procured a surfeit of resentment and convinced himself that Johnny date-raped Amy. (Apparently, Amy lost her virginity with Johnny and not Vince.) After relentless entreaties, Johnny reluctantly confesses that things may have gotten a "little rough."
Enter Amy, whom Vince apparently had phoned up out of the blue before "Tape" began. Suddenly Amy is trapped in the motor lodge with two misogynists from her days of yore, and is forced to play out their unresolved and immature high school antagonisms.
I won’t go any further, dare I ruin what little plot there is to destroy. But I will say that the problem with "Tape" is not only its claustrophobic mise-en-scene (although that certainly doesn’t help move things along), but the fact that Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard are both missing the charisma required for the role of a protagonist – even a date-raping, drug-dealing, low-budget, independent film protagonist. Even exuding just a dash of charisma would not only supply a necessary explanation as to why a classy beauty like Amy would be involved with either of them in the first place, but it would also make their characters more ambiguous and therefore more compelling.
On the other hand, Vince and Johnny are not simply brutishly offensive enough to fascinate us, like, say, Neil LaBute’s businessmen in In the Company of Men. As it is, they are merely vapid villains trapped in a dreary setting playing out petty rivalries. And in the end, that is simply not enough to carry a chatty talky film. – JoAnne Steglitz