L.I.E. Directed by Michael Cuesta. Written by Stephen M. Ryder, Michael Cuesta, and Gerald Cuesta. With Brian Cox, Paul Franklin Dano, Billy Kay, Bruce Altman, James Costa, Tony Donnelly, Walter Masterson, and Adam LeFevre. A Lot 47 Films release. At the Avon.

The title refers to the Long Island Expressway, which is where people like Harry Chapin, Alan Pakula, and the mother of Howie Blitzer (Paul Franklin Dano) have died, and which, as a metaphor, is the only thing that doesn't ring true in Michael Cuesta's brilliant debut. But the symbolism diminishes in importance to the palpable anomie and nascent nightmare of the setting. No filmmaker in recent memory has so successfully re-created the landscape of ephemeral trauma and desire that is middle-class suburbia of the 21st century, or done comparable justice to the much exploited and misunderstood spirit of adolescent transgression and angst.

Unlike, say, Bully and American Pie 2, which reduce their subjects to objects of raunchy ridicule and voyeuristic gawking, Cuesta shares in his kids' rueful wit and casual grotesquerie. Early on, Howie and his pals gather in a strip-mall pizza joint, and between slices one is chided for his ongoing incest: "It's not politically correct to fuck your sister." "Use protection." Then they set off to break into and pillage one of the ritzier local residences. The sequence is casually shocking but not gratuitous, and it has the detail of authenticity.

Despite his Dennis-the-Menace-like forelock and baby face, Howie's no angel. You can't blame that on poverty -- he lives in an overdesigned minimalist white monstrosity of a house as soulless as, if better appointed than, the "futuristic" dwelling places in A Clockwork Orange. There he's comforted by vestiges of his late mother's presence -- the lipstick he shyly samples, the snatches of French culture he parrots. Howie's dad, Marty (Bruce Altman), could be more attentive, but he has problems of his own. His construction firm is the one named on TV as being under federal investigation, and his disastrous lunch with his lawyer is one of the film's many hilarious, horrifying throwaway moments. Between this turmoil and evenings spent screwing his new bimbo girlfriend while wearing only a hard hat, Marty doesn't have much time to supervise his boy.

So Howie hangs out with such bad company as Gary (Billy Kay), a low-rent thief and underage prostitute who eventually hooks him up with Big John "B.J." Harrigan (Brian Cox, in this year's greatest performance), Marine veteran, stand-up guy, and secret pedophile. This is where the film moves beyond high-caliber black satire of the kind Todd Solondz could turn out on a good day to something akin to genius and tragedy. Big John is one of the great creations of American cinema, a perverse amalgam of cornball normality and nihilist scorn, of creepy menace and touching vulnerability. His home, which Howie and Gary rob while he's upstairs celebrating his mother's birthday with a tuneful if unsettling rendition of "Harrigan," is crammed with gung-ho regalia and kitschy gimcracks, but like his straight-ace demeanor, which combines platitudes with sardonic asides and a breath of perdition, it's a mask hiding the twisted, sad, funny, and weirdly noble soul beneath.

That home is where, after various treacheries, misfortunes, and misunderstandings, Howie ends up, in the bed of a sexual predator who also proves to be his only friend and the closest thing to a father figure. The most erotic moment occurs when Big John shaves Howie's fuzzless face in a mirror. The two framed faces and the gleaming straight razor are a reminder that Brian Cox played the original Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter. But they also recall the mediæval memento mori, an image of youthful beauty courted by the image of its decrepit fate, which is itself perhaps even more beautiful. What compels Big John, it seems, is the ghost of what he once was; what fascinates Howie is the specter of what he one day will become.

Not that L.I.E. condones or advocates any of the vices it depicts -- if anything, it cops out with a melodramatic ending. Lacerating and tender without being exploitative or sentimental, Cuesta's remarkable film humanizes the unspeakable. And it gives the lie to the current ratings system, which slapped the movie with an NC-17, keeping it from the eyes of those who would recognize its truth and benefit from it most.

Issue Date: October 26 - November 1, 2001