Blight night

Linklater meets Bogosian in subUrbia

by Alicia Potter

Directed by Richard Linklater. Written by Eric Bogosian. With Giovanni Ribisi, Steve Zahn, Amie Carey, Samia Shoaib, Ajay Naidu, Nicky Katt, Dina Spybey, Jayce Bartok, and Parker Posey. A Castle Rock Entertainment release. At the Avon Friday and Saturday at midnight.

Open wide for a Big Gulp of angst. Generation Vexed is back in Before Sunrise director Richard Linklater's unusually dark new film about twentynothings hanging out at a suburban convenience store. Despite the strains of a collective whine, subUrbia is not all anguish and Airwalks. With an electric cast and ferocious script by playwright Eric Bogosian, Linklater's fourth outing turns an honest, insightful eye on that at once liberating and paralyzing limbo land known as post-adolescence.

The film opens in Burnfield, USA, an asphalt anywhere of strip malls, fast-food joints, and tract housing. As dusk falls, the usuals gather at "the Corner" outside the local convenience store. There's Jeff (Giovanni Ribisi), a sensitive Sartre in Doc Martens; Tim (Nicky Katt), a fascist cynic; Buff (Steve Zahn), film's funniest bonehead since Sean Penn's Spicoli; punky artist Sooze (Amie Carey); and Bee-Bee (Dina Spybey), a sparrow of a girl with big problems. Their umpteenth night of boozy, existential posturing is disrupted by the return of high-school chum Pony (played with blown-dry vapidity by Jayce Bartok), whose band are gunning for a gold record. The proverbial One Who Escaped, this rocker steps out of his stretch limo and immediately trips on his MTV ego. His Hootie-esque fame divides the Corner gang. Some mock it as one more reason to spit bile at an unfair world; others cling to it as hope of life beyond community college and a twin bed at Mom and Dad's. As jealousy, alienation, and racial tensions between the parking-lot denizens and the store's Pakistani owners (Ajay Naidu and Samia Shoaib) simmer, Linklater proves once again that a hell of a lot can change in just one night.

---

Visiting subUrbia

---

The unflinchingly raw screenplay by Bogosian (a baby-boomer well versed in tortured existence) offers no inane retro-banter about Ginger versus Mary Ann or Ponch versus Jon. However, there is plenty of affected, post-Reaganomic bellyaching. Although the film identifies with the anguish of the Urban Outfitters crowd, it does not refrain from rattling the generation for its fickle conscience and muddled ideals. Even Jeff, the well-intentioned, rambling voice of reason, is far from flawless. He waxes Tom Joad-like about Third World hunger and his "duty as a human being to be pissed off" while tolerating pals with blatantly racist and misogynist views.

The characters are archetypal but complex enough to sidestep stereotype. Tim injects an unnerving sinisterism into the group as the Air Force dropout shackled to a gridiron-hero past. His anarchy smacks into Jeff's idealism, and the curious friendship sets up the ideological extremes around which the other characters orbit. In one scene, Tim strips the façade of Pony's spoiled publicist, Erica (Parker Posey), with chilling accuracy. She, in turn, offers to strip her designer separates in an ode to the maddening appeal of a vulnerable asshole.

Except for indie omnipresence Posey, the cast is an ensemble of relatively unknown but gifted rising stars. Amie Carey as Sooze radiates starry-eyed ambition with her Chiclet-tooth grin and sparkling energy. Her Busby Berkeley-meets-William S. Burroughs performance art is at once a humorously absurd feminist statement and an agonizingly sincere stab at personal expression. Likewise, Zahn as the hyperactive "postmodern idiot savant" Buff is a scene stealer. Whether he's humping a car or drunkenly snuggling up to a lawn gnome, he's ever the lovable pig (if there is such a thing).

For Linklater the film is a marked departure from the sprawling storytelling of 1991's Slacker and 1993's Dazed and Confused. To echo the feelings of entrapment, the director sandwiches his predominantly tight, spare shots between fluid stretches of suburban blight. But he struggles at points with the jump from stage to screen. Some scenes, particularly those dealing with Bee-Bee's addictions, dip into melodrama, and a handful of theatrical lines tumble out with a thud.

Funny, familiar, and powerful, the film chips away at the jadedness of youth; by the time the sun starts to climb, it's cracked open a generation's potential for inspired clarity. Linklater's subUrbia may not be a nice place to live, but it's an enlightening place to visit.

---

Visiting subUrbia

---