Henry Fool

The desperation of the characters in Hal Hartley's new Henry Fool is not so much quiet as monotone. That, of course, is a trademark of Hartley, whose work ranges from the incisive and moving in Amateur to the pretentious and empty in his previous outing, Flirting. Fool falls somewhere in between, benefitting from a wry comic absurdity, outstanding performances, and Hartley's commitment to its themes of the creative imagination, the pitfalls of the marketplace, and the anxiety of influence.

James Urbaniak is intense and pathetic as Simon Grim, a garbageman stifled into silence by his family and community until given a composition notebook and pencil by the title character (Thomas Jay Ryan in a memorable screen debut), himself an itinerant ex-con, dissolute satyr, and monomaniacal budding author. Fool recognizes Grim's voluminous jottings as a Whitmanesque outpouring in iambic pentameter (we have to take his word for it, as we never get to hear the verse), and he sees his protege's subsequent success and notoriety as a means to his own advancement.

The conflicts of loyalty, integrity, and taste that follow are not much developed by Parker Posey's standard turn as Grim's flighty, nymphomaniacal sister, or by an unconvincing, melodramatic third act that drags the film on about a half-hour too long. Even-handed and unpedantic, grossly scatological, Henry Fool has the wisdom to recognize that genius often springs from what is most despised and condemned. At the Avon and Jane Pickens.

-- Peter Keough