Living in Oblivion

1995 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: An independent director tries to make the film of his dreams.

That's a clever plot synopsis, but you'd have to see this Tom DiCillo film in order to understand why. Or maybe just keep reading because I'll spoil it for you and tell you.

Here's the spoiler--this film is a triptych of behind-the-scenes independent film-making stories, and two of those are the dreams of Steve Buscemi's director character and his lead actress and muse played by Catherine Keener. I have a crush on both of those people anyway, and my brother (who isn't speaking to me) and I are big fans of the only other DiCillo film I've seen--Johnny Suede. I'm not sure why I didn't bother looking for DiCillo's other movies. This was the follow-up to Johnny Suede and is apparently inspired by the process of making that movie.

I usually enjoy movies about making movies. This is a consistently clever and entertaining look at the plethora of things that can go wrong during the process of making a film. From technology issues and the ineptitude of the crew to personal drama, cast dynamics, and angry dwarfs, this is never boring, and that's despite a lot of the dialogue or action in the individual thirds being exactly the same. It's continually surprising, keeping it fun. The sequences, directly from the subconscious, are as believable as nightmares, sometimes bordering on the absurd, but they give the audience a peek behind the curtain as these characters struggle to film a simple movie scene.

Catherine Keener is fantastic, especially in the nuances she adds to these lines that she's required to deliver over and over again. Part of it might just be to keep her from being completely bored, but it really opens up the character quite a bit, too. Not the character that her character is playing--the character whom Cahterine Keener is playing. Her nipples also make an appearance. Buscemi's nipples are unfortunately nowhere to be seen, but he's also just as good as you'd expect him to be, always right on that edge of a nervous breakdown. And nothing personifies a nervous breakdown or minor existential crisis like Buscemi's eyeballs. Peter Dinklage, wearing a sexy turquoise (or powder blue?) top hat, is also in the third segment of this. It's his first role, and it might have been this role that typecast him as an angry little person, never quite shaking off lines like "One of these days I'm gonna punch somebody in the balls!" Or maybe that's just the intensity of his forehead.

A sweet and jazzy vibes-and-oboe score by Jim Farmer gives this a coolness that could have been lost with name-checks of Richard Gere, Winona Ryder, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

I'm going to have to see more Tom DiCillo movies. Anybody seen any of these? Delirious? I think I might have seen that one actually. Box of Moonlight? The Real Blonde? Double Whammy? At least two of those look promising.