Tape
A film by Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, Uma Thurman.
This is a film version of a play by Stephen Berber. It is a One Act, ‘motel-sink’ drama about High School buddies meeting together later in life. Their reunion occasions the exploration of relationship, past and present, and enables a morality driven script to search maniacally for the ‘truth’ as it is re-membered/re-constructed by those involved.
The three actors on whom this film focuses and depends, perform skillfully, allowing appropriate glimpses of the adolescent vulnerability floating just below the surface of their adult personas. The wonderfully witty phrase “excessive linguistic pressure”, introduced in this film, is also the device used, sometimes to scratch, and at other times to tear away the characters’ veneers.
Vincent (Ethan Hawke) is a small time drug dealer to aged Hippies. He drinks beer and burps with gusto and is more comfortable in his boxer shorts and singlet. In a world, according to Johnny, where woman do not have to hang around ‘losers’ with phallic tendencies, Vincent’s girlfriend has left him.
Johnny (Robert Sean Leonard) is a slick, politically correct aspiring filmmaker. He has returned to his hometown Lansing, Michigan, for a festival at which his latest film will be screened. Vince has come to town for the screening. Amy (Uma Thurman) is Lansing’s Assistant District Attorney. Unbeknown to John, Vince has invited her to join him.
The intelligence of this script is the post-modern revelation that everything is indeed a ‘work in progress’, a continual construction according to the context and the players. Even the attempt to capture the ‘truth’ on tape is ultimately redundant and as is pointedly stated ‘you can’t have the last word because it’s not yours to have’.
Lou Crow
