Review of Sordid Lives
Laughs weren't thrown out-with the trash
By Rick Groen
Sordid Lives
Directed and written by Del Shores
Starring Bonnie Bedelia, Beau Bridges, Olivia Newton-John
Classification: NA
Rating*2
When the subtitles alone can fetch a laugh, you know the movie’s got something going for it.
Sordid Lives: A Black Comedy about White Trash. Black enough that the film kicks off with someone kicking off. Trashy enough that the deceased is an elderly granny who died having hotel room sex with a wooden-legged layabout half her age.
Funny enough that the cause of death was the aforementioned leg, which prompted a head smacking fall when tripped over during a postcoltal visit to the john. Not to worry. None of the above is dramatized on camera, so no need to alert Jerry Springes. Instead, we hear about it as the extended family a nest of back combed, chain-smoking, Texas trailer-park gals gathers to attend the funeral and dish the dirt. They’re gifted dishers all, thanks to the perfect pitch of writer-director Del Shores. Adapting the picture from his own stage play, the man has a keen ear for Southern slang.
And I don’t mean that “Hush my puppies” jive that passes for dialecs on TV sitcoms. Shores’s brand is the real deal, funny without bending off into aural parody. For example, consider the deceased’s not much-younger sibling, Sissy. A dab hand with a tuna casserole, she’s a multimarried good of gal, cross-addicted to nicotine and homespun wisdom. Contemplating the tragic state of affairs. Sissy motions toward a nearby trailer home and drawis: “It’s just so awkward when your neighbour’s husband kills your sister.”
Beth Grant has a field day drawing out that line, as do the rest of the cast with similarly juicy goodies that Shores pops into their eager mouths. And given the miniscule budget, an impressive cast it is- including Beau Bridges (the wooden-legged one), Bonnie Bedalia (granny’s straight-laced daugh matter) and Olivia Newton-John. You me read right that Olivia. What’s aging Aussie doing in a Texas comedy? Can’t tell exactly, except that she keeps popping up to sing country tunes and gospel songs, and sings them dam well. Don’t ask it’s that kind of flick.
Unfortunately, Shores’s talent for dialogue doesn’t extend to structure, which is a colossal mess; or to theme, which is a mere bromide. You see, two of the family members are gay, an aged queen long confined to a mental institution in order to be “de-homosexualized”, and a young actor trying to summon the courage to exit the closet. Gee, will the red-neck clan see the error of their bigoted ways and wel come these aberrant souls back into the fold?
Yep, the message is as flat as Shores’s direction. He shot the movie with a digital camera that looks to have frozen in place every frame is painfully static. But if the film’s flaws are large, so are its laughs. Large and intermittent and unexpected they sneak up on you. Just as you’re about to give up on the picture, as the erratic tone lurches from bald farce to strained polgnancy and back again, a laugh is there again, doing what laughter does best -redeeming Sordid Lives