New Rose Hotel

I've never really understood the allure of pursuing high stakes crime. Most related films make it clear that should you reach 50 having embraced such a life, you're remarkably fortunate if you're not locked up and still have a small army of troops protecting you. It's not passing before reaching old age that's disconcerting it's living while constantly worrying about outwitting your adversaries. That must grow tiresome after awhile. But I suppose the work may be more exciting.

In Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel, Fox/Christopher Walken celebrates the risk-fuelled life, and living without fear or limits, it's one of his best performances.

Perhaps there's something of the actor's lifestyle caught up with imaginative redefinition, the lucrative transference of artistic synergies inherently illuminating his authenticity. 

The film's well-cast, he's amicably joined by a less animated yet lithe Willem Dafoe (X), who works as his trusted partner engaging in lucrative industrial espionage.

Asia Argento (Sandii) luxuriously complements his smitten improvised amorous calling, the hopeless romantic having found yet another seemingly impressionable curious enthusiast.

But she may have more than one identity and may not seek the cloistered path.

So distressing these inspired freedoms.

Ethereal interconnected independence.

It's kind of like sci-fi noir although the detectives aren't what you'd expect, they're more like spies helping a science-genius move from one covetous corporation to the next.

The ominous sense of impending doom delicately blended with ebullient hope, shockingly seduces and destructively serenades as the jocose trio travels the globe.

Ah well, it doesn't seem like they're hiring poets although in the '90s we really believed, or I did anyways, that the old world stereotypes prejudicially preventing misfits from finding alternative trade routes would fade away.

Into banal feudal oblivion along with war and irritable class-bias.

Since Trump things have changed dramatically.

Not to mention the woeful pandemic.

Nevertheless, I imagined the poems I've been writing recently for several years as time progressed. 

When new rhymes seemed improbable, I rewrote the language.

For better or worse, I don't really know. 

I am still having as much fun, although I need to start transforming my film reviews too.

The future radiating indeterminate.

Just picked up some more horseradish. 

Tommaso

A caring romantic versatile actor intuitively attempts to settle into middle-age (Willem Dafoe as Tommaso), living in Italy at the moment, with his wife Nikki (Cristina Chiriac) and infant daughter.

He's recovering from an adventurous youth and is more in touch with routine than spontaneity, but Nikki's much younger than he is, and in possession of bold free spirits.

His warmhearted personality and wide-ranging depth of learning still generate friendship and opportunity, as he teaches from time to time and pursues vigorous Italian studies.

There's no shortage of work nor lack of inspiration in his multifaceted intriguing realm, in fact I'd argue moving somewhere new revitalizes the artistic life (as many others do too).

But he's becoming a bit more rigid, a little more convinced there's a way things should be, and he's much more willing to express his discontent at least at home when he's moody and hungry.

His family's non-traditional inasmuch as its roles aren't strictly typecast, not that he's looking for something that definitive, but he's also grown tired of loose-knit structures.

He's sensitive and hates being left out even if no slight was intended.

He feels like he's grown accustomed to neglect.

And tries to do something about it.

It's a pretty chill film for the most part, cool people living independent lives, creativity blossoming in the moment, relaxed agile thought and feeling.

Like Domicile conjugal, nevertheless, it has to introduce provocative conflict (without the comedy), which unfortunately transforms the synergies into something much less romantic.

Does there have to be a power struggle, do people have to try to take control?, I've met married couples who respect each other's boundaries and the results are often super fun.

I suppose narrative conflict's fundamental, one of the first things you consider when writing a script, but does that mean such narratives are fundamentalist, even when they're exploring unorthodox lives?

It doesn't, although you could see it that way if you grow tired of watching artistic films which embrace cataclysm, not that every art film should be laissez-faire, but it'd still be cool if it happened more often.

Isn't there realism in the laissez-faire as well, inasmuch as a lot of life isn't one big power struggle, beyond corporate trial and error, like a random ice cream sundae?

Is everyone just angry with everyone else (the Trump effect) and is it up to auteurs to serialize that angst, or do Degrassiesque ontologies persist like blanketed communal Zit Remedies?

Tommaso's a solid film but I was disappointed with the ending.

Would still watch it again though.

Abel Ferrara's still got it.