A quirky, charming odyssey through a dusty, disaster-ridden America, BAIL JUMPER restores a sense of exhilaration to the road movie. The determinedly deadpan humor, sudden--albeit harmless--outbursts, strong visuals, and eccentric cast may recall the work of Jim Jarmusch, but director
Christian Faber has his own style, which is much livelier and less detached than Jarmusch's approach. Beautifully edited, the film moves along snappily with none of the longeurs that have become Jarmusch's signature.
Joe (B.J. Spalding) and Elaine (Eszter Balint) are a pair of endlessly bickering lovers in Murky Springs, Missouri. To describe Joe as an underachiever would be an understatement: his days consist largely of staying in bed, drinking, and shooting at bugs on the ceiling with a hand gun. Elaine has
her own manner of aberrant behavior. A chronic K-Mart shoplifter, she has recently jumped bail on an out-of-state arrest for a bank robbery performed with her twin sister. Joe and Elaine decide to skip town and follow their dreams to Manhattan. On the road, they encounter a spiritualist (Joie Lee)
who offers a terse but telling interpretation of the couple's relationship: "When the two of you are together, there are tremendous influences." Her words appear to be on target, for their trail is dogged by tornadoes, meteor showers, solar eclipses, and locust plagues. Upon arrival in the Big
Apple, they are immediately stranded on Staten Island by a massive tidal wave, but their love is supreme, ensuring their survival.
Faber's off-the-cuff approach makes the most of the behavioral humor of his scenes. His feel for youthful, low-budget amusement is cannily on the money. A desultory summertime bash, a target-practice party, and a motel pool celebration all perfectly capture Midwestern anomie. Faber also deftly
intercuts stock footage of various natural disasters, which amount to a stirringly romantic accompaniment to the whacked-out lovers' hegira. Tomasz Magierski's dark-hued cinematography further enhances the film's effectiveness, catching the shadowy ambience of the characters' environs and psyches,
and blending almost seamlessly with the disaster footage. (The cataclysms are less natural in Manhattan: Joe is attacked by a group of Wall Street maenads, simply because he reminds them of their old boy friends.) A tinkly, angelic score by Richard Robbins provides just the right glue to hold all
of this together, investing the story line with a dreamy resonance (Elaine's mother was a country singer whose song haunts her daughter and the film).
Employing the "just got out of bed" acting style already used to great advantage by Adam Coleman Howard in SLAVES OF NEW YORK and Nicolas Cage in VAMPIRE'S KISS, Spalding has the humorless mannerisms of his psychotic character down pat. He is especially funny delivering his reductive existential
manifesto: "You know, those days when everybody looks ugly and you don't know why people look at you strange. I'm better off right here [in bed]." It's to Spalding's credit, however, that despite his character's often juvenile behavior, he is able to convince us of his abiding love for Elaine
(making the most of his watery blue eyes in the process). After a six-year absence following her memorable debut in STRANGER THAN PARADISE, the lovely Balint makes a triumphant return to independent cinema. At times she is reminiscent of Tracey Ullman (especially when impersonating her own twin);
at other moments she has the wily, secretive look of the quintessential Warhol diva, Andrea Feldman. Her naturalistic acting--which could be described as amateurish but heartfelt--is as strangely compelling as ever, and it tickles the ear to hear what her Hungarian accent makes of simple phrases
like "Elk's Lodge" or "alkaline batteries." The image of Balint floating through her new Staten Island home, gun in hand, to the strains of "Pistol Packin' Mama" is unforgettable. Of the supporting performers, Alexandra Auder is sweetly touching as Elaine's friend Bambi, and Tony Askin is the Evil
Nerd personified, forever accosting Joe with childhood reminiscences ("Remember third grade?"). Lee (on vacation from brother Spike's heated sphere) has a relaxed ambiguity as the omniscient Athena, and Bo Brinkman is briefly amusing as the hunting-happy Steve, who meets his end by lightning. His
funeral, set in a field of daisies, is just one of BAIL JUMPER's utterly disarming moments. (Violence, profanity, substance abuse, sexual situations.) leave a comment