MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Storyville’: Southern-Fried Election Tale of Sex and Slime

“Storyville” (selected theaters) is big on mood, Southern Gothic style. Sweaty, drawly upper-crust crackers slither their way through the moss-hung New Orleans depravity. Their white suits are tarnished by sin.

Cynical movies about political chicanery are always tonic in a political election year; they help counteract all the blather. In “Storyville,” we’re ringside at a dirty-tricks congressional campaign where the candidates seem to be taking turns trying to out-sleaze each other. But, if you’re going to act wised-up, it helps to be wise.

“Storyville” has its wormy, down-and-dirty political insights, but it’s after weirder, wilder game. Mark Frost, who co-created “Twin Peaks,” is trying for a similar, communal creepiness. He wants to show how family corruption can persist like a curse through generations; he wants to dramatize the cost of bucking your own blood.

With a more densely layered script (Lee Reynolds was the co-writer), Frost might have succeeded. He has a slippery, ominous visual sense, and a nose for where the bodies are buried. But he can’t provide the buzzing texture that this material requires. It’s unsettling but thin--”Single Peak.”

This is the kind of film (rated R for language, sensuality and violence) where you can painlessly pass the time comparing the actors’ wavering Southern accents.

As the corrupt congressman with a whole beardful of secrets, Jason Robards has an authentic bluster. As a corrupt porno photographer in black sleeveless T-shirts, barrel-chested Charles Haid is a credit to his drawl. But James Spader, who plays the (initially) corrupt heir apparent to his family’s political dynasty, can’t quite get the hang of it, and neither can Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as his ex-girlfriend and current courtroom adversary. Few things drop one out of a movie more thuddingly than a phony Southern accent.

There are some intriguing set-pieces, like the one where Spader’s Cray Fowler thinks he’s stepping into a romantic assignation with a beautiful Asian woman (Charlotte Lewis) and ends up being tossed around aikido-style. (They both end up in the Jacuzzi anyway.) The film always gives the impression that more is happening beneath its slimy surfaces than we can comprehend, but it also gives us too little credit for our own comprehension. Most of the dirty little secrets are all too obvious.

At least they are to us. When Cray wades into a suspiciously compromising situation and then we observe the inevitable videocam whirring away, the film loses our sympathy. It’s not just that Cray should be smarter. Spader should be too. After “sex, lies and videotape” and “Bad Influence,” surely Spader should be hip to the predictability of building yet another movie around the damages of video voyeurism.

‘Storyville’

James Spader: Cray Fowler

Jason Robards: Clifford Fowler

Joanne Whalley-Kilmer: Natalie Tate

Piper Laurie: Constance Fowler

A Davis Entertainment Co. presentation of an Edward R. Pressman production in association with David Roe, released by 20th Century Fox. Director Mark Frost. Producers David Roe and Edward Pressman. Executive producers John Davis and John Flock. Screenplay by Mark Frost and Lee Reynolds, based on the novel “Juryman” by Frank Galbally and Robert Mackin. Cinematographer Ron Garcia. Editor B. J. Sears. Costumes Louise Frogley. Production design Richard Hoover. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (language, sex, violence).