You Ain't Seen Me, Right? - Trees Lounge (1996)

While the rest of us are dicking around in Photoshop and sniggering at fart gags, You Ain't Seen Me, Right? is the regular feature that considers films we haven't even heard of. This is one of them.

You Ain't Seen Me, Right? is brought to you by Daniel Palmer, of Part-Time Infidel web fame. He watches films that have won awards, and not just in the technical categories.

Trees Lounge (1996)
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Steve Buscemi is the Peter Lorre of his generation, with his portrayals of villains, psychos and deadbeats aided in no small part by his unorthodox appearance. But to dismiss him simply as a character actor specialising in grotesques and eccentrics is to overlook his burgeoning career behind the camera. He has worked on high-calibre TV like Oz and The Sopranos and films like Animal Factory (2000) and Lonesome Jim (2005), though his finest directorial effort remains his debut feature.

Tommy (Buscemi) is an unemployed mechanic who lives above Trees Lounge, the bar where he spends the majority of his time. His girlfriend, Theresa (Elizabeth Bracco), has left him for his best friend, Rob (Anthony LaPaglia), and is pregnant with a child that may be his. When his uncle (Seymour Cassel) dies of a heart attack at the wheel of his ice cream van, Tommy takes the job, developing an unhealthy attachment to Theresa's 17-year-old niece, Debbie (Chloe Sevigny).

Trees Lounge captures the spirit of Charles Bukowski's stark prose more accurately than the direct adaptations of his work; Buscemi's sleepy demeanour embodies the lassitude of the ‘lowlife laureate' in a way that a carefully dishevelled Mickey Rourke in Barfly (1987) or Matt Dillon in Factotum (2005) could never hope to. Buscemi proved himself to be a skilled writer of dialogue, observer of human behaviour and judge of tone, the film's consciously languid pace echoing the aimless lives it depicts.



Sevigny dispelled any notion that her breakthrough performance in Kids (1995) was due solely to her elfin androgyny, exhibiting assurance beyond her years as the surly teenager who throws Tommy's situation into sharp relief and offers him the chance to relive some of his lost youth. Mark Boone Junior plays Mike, a hard-drinking barfly who is struggling to keep his marriage together; Boone has made a career depicting lowlifes and Buscemi put his sleazy deportment to good use here. Daniel Baldwin is suitably threatening as Debbie's father, Carol Kane shines as Connie, a redoubtable barmaid, and there are fleeting appearances from Samuel L. Jackson, Mimi Rogers and Kevin Corrigan.

Buscemi brought a European sensibility to his portrait of small-town ennui, resisting the temptation to lapse into melodrama when delineating the complex dynamic of the central relationships. The intricacies of the characters' lives are gradually revealed in their interactions rather than a contrived plot twist. The understated camerawork, downbeat photography and pitch-perfect performances paint a darkly comic picture of simmering resentment, festering regret and crippling loneliness.

One of the most poignant moments comes when Connie mistakes Tommy for Bill (Bronson Dudley), the veteran lush who props up the bar day in, day out; offering Tommy a window into his future. Trees Lounge presents a sort of anti-Cheers, an unflinching look at the ugly side of the drinking culture, showing the bar not as a hospitable refuge from life's iniquities but a hive of self-obliteration and mutual denial, dispelling the romance of barroom badinage to expose the grim compulsion that drives the addict, never daring to stop lest reality should impinge.
Awesome work. Right, now I'm off out to get shitfaced. More from You Ain't Seen Me, Right? next week.