# Buffalo '66 (1998)

### reviewed by
Andrew Arbuckle

    Re-inovating ‘66

Given: The abduction love story is getting old. Last we saw, the genre was getting old enough to produce satire as we saw in A Life Less Ordinary. Genres if not redefined, are condemned to die. However, if you throw Vincent Gallo into anything, he'll turn it around and make sure he looks good in the process. Even with his enormous ego, he has created something reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise in a hyper-real world of cold cruelty.

A biography. The first image is a photograph of a young boy and his dog. The opening credits are a'la Godard. Big "contrasty" print against a neutral background. Gives the feeling of a newspaper, in the most bizarre sense. Vincent Gallo, just released from prison in the form of Billy Brown, finds himself waiting for the bus into town. Surprisingly the filmmaker/actor has chosen to let us see his butt-crack, and soon you find out just where Buffalo, NY exists in the anatomy of the U.S.

The bus lands Billy right in Buffalo, and his predicament slowly unravels. As you would expect for someone just out of jail, "he doesn't have a pot to piss in" so to speak. After relieving himself, he makes a call to his parents. From that point on, something's amiss. Supposedly, Billy is married, works for the government and never went to jail. At least that's what his parents think.

Here's where Gallo hits his first speed bump. Dead pan satire of the genre he's working with? Relying too much on human sympathy? In either case, all at once we meet Christina Ricci's Layla, watch her overhear his troubled conversation with the parents, and five seconds later she's the sympathetic abductee. Funny? In retrospect, yes. However, Gallo treads on dangerous ground as he seems to avoid the most questionable part of the genre, its believability. Or is that the point?

Formally, the film is quite interesting. Gallo moves freely between the "gimicky" and the truly apt. Comical freeze frames heighten the world that he has created, while moments of honesty literally punch through the frame.

Billy brings Layla home to his parents, asking her to pose as his wife. Here is where the real film begins. Ben Gazzara and Anjelica Huston are the perfect image of the disfunctional family. Both parents hardly even acknowledge their son, but they try their best to make a good impression on Layla. Gallo does wonderful things with interrupting the dinner discussion with the starkly objective flashback, giving us a glimpse into the parents' psyches. This device rips open the film's surrealism and adds to the film's biographical feeling. The result is that you see Billy in torment as he suffers through the dual nature of his parents. Layla is the observer as Billy's life unfolds before her, and her sympathy for him only grows.

Billy is abrasive and abusive of Layla, yet with few debates she puts up with him. She is already in love with him, but he won't let her get close. Layla seems to have uncannily sensed it from the beginning, but we start to discover Billy's humanity,. Billy went to jail after a $10,000 bet on the Buffalo Bills fell through. His behavior is hardly a shadow of what his parents put him through. We see his need for his parents to be proud of him as a compensatory reaction to their actions. As we get to know Billy he turns out to be someone quite different than we would've expected.

While in a domestic environment, the camera is a stationary observer, not unlike Stranger than Paradise. What Gallo does masterfully here though is long stationary point of view shots alternating between Layla and Billy. The table conversation is hilariously portrayed with the audience sitting in the empty chair. Alternately, the world of Buffalo is portrayed with an immediacy where Billy is making his rounds, taking care of his business before he moves on.

Layla, unfortunately becomes too much of a shell that the audience can fill with their own psyche as they learn of Billy being more of a victim than a criminal, which is a waste of Christina Ricci, who despite her age shows promise as an actress. The filmmaker instills the film with a "Gallo-centrism" as you really feel the center of the film focused on Billy, with Layla sometimes listening to Billy's monologues with an unsympathetic profile forcing the eye and attention to focus solely on Billy's angst-ridden memories.

Despite its pitfalls, Buffalo '66 is an ambitous film that if unsuccesful at revitalizing the genre, may definitely be its best eulogy. Although the genre might be beyond saving, Gallo has put it to rest. By using a caricatured look of a dying post-industrial city, Gallo is able to contrast it with this unlikely love story that leaves you with a sentimental hope for the two of them.

    (C) Andrew Arbuckle

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