MOVIE REVIEW : Cleareyed View of Small-Town America

Most American movies fumble or fake it when they try to describe American small-town life, putting on a multimillion-dollar lacquer of prefab plot lines and glossy invention. They’re city-slicker movies, full of clueless condescension. But “Gas Food Lodging” (at the Hillcrest Cinemas) is a rare exception; it captures a genuine heartland feel.

This low-budget independent movie, about an all-female family of three in the desert stop of Laramie, N.M., gives you a sense of the flow and flux of towns, and of their isolation, lassitude and entrapment. Written and directed by Allison Anders, who was born in Kentucky, it neither evades nor inflates. There’s real shrewdness and compassion in its depiction of ordinary lives--but also a curious, lyrical sense of romance and mystery.

The main characters--waitress Nora (Brooke Adams) and her daughters Trudi (Ione Skye) and Shade (Fairuza Balk, a bright, fresh presence)--are all wonderfully drawn. These women are the focus; the men are both the problem and the potential escape hatch.

Nora, deserted by the girls’ father, has a wry, wary attitude toward males: They’ve disappointed or run out on her too often. Trudi, a flashy flirt and tight-skirted “bad girl,” hurls herself at them, trying desperately for some recurring sexual validation. (We learn why later, in a harrowing confession.) And Shade, whose narration of the film gives it an innocent overview, idealizes them--just as she idealizes her absent father and her idol, the fictional Mexican movie actress Elvia Rivero (Nina Belanger), whose exploits she peruses endlessly in the local Sunne Cinema.

Director Anders, like Nora, is a single mother who raised two daughters, and it’s obvious that she’s injected a lot of her own experiences and feelings into the material, which is based on Richard Peck’s novel “Don’t Look and It Won’t Hurt.” But the most important thing she’s caught is the feel of an uncushioned life.

We’re far from the sun-drenched, spiffy, overprotected suburban world of many American movies--a world where every outsider is either a clown, a sexual possibility or a threat--and deeper into a realm of crackling radios, snowy TVs, old cars and houses full of casual, lived-in clutter. Fittingly, one semi-Prince Charming named Hamlet (David Lansbury) installs TV satellite dishes--and the local artist-rebel, Darius (played by Donovan’s son and Ione Skye’s brother, Donovan Leitch), is a window-dresser who worships Olivia Newton-John.

In drawing these men--Hamlet; Darius; Nora’s Peter Pan-ish married lover, Raymond (Chris Mulkey); Trudi’s British geologist-lover, Dank (Robert Knepper), and Shade’s eventual Latino boyfriend, Javier (Jacob Vargas)--Anders hasn’t been malicious. In two cases, with Dank and Javier, she may even be guilty of overromanticization.

But this generosity and sympathy lets Anders craft some gem-like scenes, including the movie’s most memorable: Shade’s second encounter with her long-absent father, John Evans (James Brolin).

As sweet Shade requests help from this shaggy, stubbled, dissipated-looking man, and as a wrangle over finances erupts with John’s current lover, Kim (Leigh Hamilton), the emotion steadily and unassertively builds. And when, with weary shyness, Evans catches Shade and hands her his little roll of cash, that gift becomes a heartbreaking symbol of everything he didn’t do or give his family--of all we expect, and don’t get, out of life.

If that wistful, cleareyed melancholy were its primary mood, “Gas Food Lodging” might have been a little masterpiece. It isn’t--but it’s good enough. Anders gets the externals of her vision of Laramie: a world of high skies, searing deserts, dusty stores and roads that vanish into a flat horizon. And the internals: the bickering, hurts, dreams and little everyday epiphanies. If many movies avoid or disguise the world, shining it up beyond recognition, “Gas Food Lodging” (MPAA-rated R, for language) takes the opposite approach, a better one. It jumps right into life, faces it with careless affection, clarity and courage.

‘Gas Food Lodging’

Brooke Adams: Nora

Ione Skye: Trudi

Fairuza Balk: Shade

James Brolin: John Evans

An IRS Releasing Corp. presentation of a Cineville/Seth Willenson production. director/screenplay Allison Anders. Producers Daniel Hassid, Seth M. Willenson, William Ewart. Executive producers Carl-Jan Colpaart. Cinematographer Dean Lent. Editor Tracy S. Granger. Music J Mascis. Production design Jane Ann Stewart. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (language, sensuality).