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BY PETER KEOUGH
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Five years on the shelf, first-time director Toni Kalem’s 1999 adaptation of a 35-year-old Anne Tyler novel emerges cicada-like for its brief span in the theaters. Lili Taylor brings her offbeat talent to Evie, a lumpish loser in a North Carolina backwater. She’s the kind of woman who listens to song dedications on the radio while gazing into a snow globe. One night, she catches an interview with a local talent, Bertram "Drumstrings" Casey (Guy Pearce), whose arrogance and free-association seduce her. Soon she’s attending his shows at the local roadhouse with her friends, the village slut and the village fat girl. Not long after that, she’s carved Casey’s name, in reverse (she’s looking into a mirror), on her forehead. That metaphor provides the only coherence in the movie, a symbol of blurred identity in a film desperate for an identity of its own. Tyler’s novel itself is a Redbook variation on the Joyce Carol Oates story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" (itself adapted in 1985 as Smooth Talk), and Kalem’s treatment wavers from cliché to confusion. (Like, when does the movie take place? Everyone drives cars from the ’60s, but Evie has a Walkman.) Pearce, though, broods and sings convincingly, and Irma P. Hall’s performance as a housekeeper almost justifies resuscitating this Life. (111 minutes)
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