MOVIE REVIEW : Tender ‘History of Parking Lots’ an Impressive Debut

In “The Natural History of Parking Lots” (Nuart), 17-year-old Chris Taylor reads from his older brother’s English paper on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”: “If we were to convey the heart of darkness today, we’d set it in the parking lot of a high school in the San Fernando Valley.”

Everett Lewis, writer-editor-director of this assured and beautiful first film, knows exactly where Los Angeles’ heart of darkness can be found. Try Beverly Hills or Hancock Park, where kids are even more disposable than marriages. Try bright, 17-year-old Chris (Charlie Bean) who lives in the family’s gated Hancock Park estate, alone except for an unseen maid, amid furniture shrouded in dust covers. Mother has remarried and moved to Palm Beach. Dad is pretty preoccupied with his portfolio and new swinging lifestyle in Marina del Rey.

It leaves Chris a lot of time to “borrow” old cars. Somehow, cruising the freeways in a ’49 Chrysler makes more sense than anything else in Chris’ life. Incautiously--actually, not caring--he drives the stolen car to school and is arrested.

Chris is released to his father, who quickly calls his older son, Lance (b. Wyatt), to take over--for a cash arrangement Chris knows nothing about. Lance has less use for his father now than when he left home, at Chris’ age, seven years earlier. He’s got handfuls of cash himself from dealing guns to Glendale neo-Nazis, but he lets himself be talked into “baby-sitting,” possibly to take a break from that world.

The brothers’ relationship may have been arbitrarily jump-started, but as Lewis paints it, in cinematographer Hisham Abed’s starking contrasted black and white and precisely composed moments, it becomes moving. The performances of Wyatt and Bean make their struggle to keep from going under in their purely material world of the utmost importance; the two are truthful, infectiously funny, absolutely fine. Bean, incidentally, had never acted before “Parking Lots.”

“Parking Lots” may seem uncalculated; actually, it’s as exact as any Bresson film, particularly the Bresson of “Pickpocket.” Lewis has an eye for the romantic--the setting at Lance’s secret swimming hole might have been composed by Thomas Eakins--and an ear for the downside of L.A. life: the brothers’ running list of fellow classmates who’ve died from drugs, violence or suicide. The movie’s chief misstep is Lance’s clunky speech explaining to Chris the nature of relationships between men, and between men and women.

In his framing, his rigor and the sound, music and ideas that fill his film, Lewis may be one of the most European-seeming of young American directors. “The Natural History of Parking Lots” (Times-rated mature for brief nudity, sexual situation, language) has already found a niche in film festivals here and in Europe. It should: It signals the arrival of a very special and cheerfully obstinate talent who seems doomed--thank heaven--to do things precisely his way.

‘THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PARKING LOTS’

A Strand Releasing presentation of a Little Deer Production. Producer Aziz Ghazal. Writer/director Everett Lewis. Camera Hisham Abed. Lighting Roy Unger. Sound Wayne Gee, Phil Mayer, Will Plyler, Chris Kenton. Editor Lewis. With Charlie Bean, b. Wyatt, Charles Glenn Taylor, Sara, Edie Zavala, Eli Guralnick, Roy Heidicker.

Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature (Times-rated mature for brief nudity, sexual situation, brief strong language and violence.)