★ 7 / 10
Set amongst the high-end drug using fraternity of
CinemaSerf
Set amongst the high-end drug using fraternity of New York, posh pusher "LeTour" works for "Ann" (Susan Sarandon) and her sidekick "Robert" (David Clennon)…
Set amongst the high-end drug using fraternity of New York, posh pusher "LeTour" works for "Ann" (Susan Sarandon) and her sidekick "Robert" (David Clennon) seeing to the needs of the rich and decadent. With discretion the key to his success, he makes a decent enough living pandering to their whims - but he has precious little time for his own life. The boat is soon rocked when "Ann" indicates that she may want to jump ship and focus entirely on her legitimate cosmetics business. "LeTour" finds his nose a bit of of joint when he discovers that "Robert" is in on the plan, but he isn't! A change for him might be in order, so he seeks the advice of glorified crystal-ball merchant "Teresa" (Mary Beth Hurt) and that leads to an accidental reunion with his ex "Marianne" (Dana Delany). She's pleased enough to see him, and he'd rekindle things in an heartbeat, but she's a reformed user and he was her supplier. Her brain equates her past with him, and she has no wish to revisit that! With quite a few balls up in the air, "LeTour" has do some serious thinking about his future. Sarandon doesn't really feature enough here for me, which is a shame because when she shares a screen with an on-form Dafoe, the film works well. She's a woman in a man's world; duplicitous, shrewd and ruthless and his persona makes for an excellent extension of her greed and ambition. Dafoe carries that character well with a quick-mouthedness that rings a little true as he navigates a world of the pimped and the procured. There's a bit of humour here, too, and as the will they/won't they romance gathers pace it compliments the little bit of intrigue that creeps into the last half hour and works well. It's not a great film, no, but I did find it flew by and is worth a watch if you ever wonder what ought to have happened to "Crockett" and "Tubbs".
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★ 7 / 10
Crowd pleasing? No. Challenging? You bet.
eminkl
Critics often rag on Paul Schrader for writing films about scumbags who find violence a shortcut to salvation. The conventional wisdom is that Schrader's…
Critics often rag on Paul Schrader for writing films about scumbags who find violence a shortcut to salvation. The conventional wisdom is that Schrader's scripts play better if Martin Scorsese directs them (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) and that when Schrader directs Schrader, the result is a heavy, humorless mess. But that's not always true. In directing his own Hardcore and American Gigolo or scripts written in a darkly witty vein (Nicholas Kazan's Patty Hearst, Harold Pinter's Comfort of Strangers), Schrader can be slyly inventive. Crowd pleasing? No. Challenging? You bet.
It's difficult to imagine anyone but Schrader controlling the moral turbulence in his script for Light Sleeper, a boldly resonant thriller that elaborates on Schrader's favored themes of sin and redemption. John LeTour, a drug dealer played by Willem Dafoe, is a loner with direct connections to Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle and American Gigolo's Julian Kay. At forty, LeTour is in crisis. His boss, Ann (a fireball Susan Sarandon), is about to chuck drugs for cosmetics. LeTour is losing his coke customers to crack. And he is spooked by a psychic, strikingly played by Mary Beth Hurt. But in his diary (one of several tips of the hat to Robert Bresson's seminal Pickpocket), LeTour writes, "I can be a good person."
Maybe so, but transcendence doesn't come easy. New York's mean streets, given a noirish sheen by cinematographer Ed Lachman, tempt LeTour as he drives through the night making deliveries to the sleek and the sleazy. He is heartened by a chance meeting with Marianne (Dana Delany), an embittered former love and former addict who lets down her defenses for one night. (Warning: Hearing Delany announce, "I'm dripping," during a hot sex scene with Dafoe may be too much for China Beach fans.) As expected, violence erupts before things settle down. Schrader is out there again, testing the limits of audience tolerance. Good for him. Buoyed by his questing spirit and Dafoe's mesmerizing performance, Light Sleeper might just keep you up nights.
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6.9/10
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Wow! Many thanks for this classic!