The movie: Ask the Dust The director: Robert Towne The stars: Salma Hayek, Colin Farrell, Donald Sutherland
Based on the late John Fante’s novel of same name, “Ask the Dust,” set in a handsomely recreated Depression-era Los Angeles, chronicles the tempestuous affair between a pair of star-crossed lovers in a city where neither feels welcome. While he looks a bit too pretty for the part, Irish actor Colin Farrell acquits himself well enough as Arturo Bandini, a rough-hewn son of Italian immigrants who migrated from Colorado to a flophouse in LA’s Bunker Hill neighborhood with designs on becoming a famous writer married to the Barbie archetype. Salma Hayek, who’s never looked finer, is scintillating as the tough-as-nails Mexican waitress on the hunt for a WASP-y hubby who can provide her unborn brood with opportunities she feels she never had.
These two butt heads from the get-go, knowing that neither fits into their idealized future, yet the attraction is undeniable. Some curious developments and too many cheeseball lines mar their explosive mating dance (“Are these shoes too good for my legs?” she asks. “Your legs are too good for those shoes,” he replies breathlessly), but all in all the actors manage to sell their troubled pairing as a metaphor for racial tension in the City of Angels. By the way, as an LA-resident, I must say that race relations here aren’t nearly as contentious as films such as this one and newly-crowned Best Pic “Crash” would have you believe.
Those hoping writer-director Towne might work the sort of magic found in his most celebrated screenplay, “Chinatown” are bound to be disappointed by this uneven effort. The dialogue is clunky; character development given short-shrift; and the racial tension that Towne asserts is keeping the lovers apart never really substantiated. Those hoping to see the stars naked, however, are in for a treat. I, for one, may never enter the Pacific Ocean again without thinking about Hayek.
