Dining On Oddities in ‘Bagdad Cafe’

Percy Adlon loves sending his favorite muse, the ample Marianne Sagebrecht, on personal journeys into quirk-dom.

The cheeky German filmmaker pushed her through the Berlin subway on a quest for love in “Sugarbaby” (1985), and he dropped her in the Mojave Desert for a soul search in “Bagdad Cafe” (1988).

The latter, one of the more peculiar movies in Adlon’s ever-peculiar library, screens Friday night as the latest installment in UC Irvine’s “Standing in a Different Light: No Longer Silent and Invisible, a Woman Seizes Her Moments” series.

Sagebrecht, Adlon’s regular leading lady, plays Jasmin this time around. We first meet her as an argument with her husband (Hans Stadlbauer) dissolves into a sort of quiet anarchy in the middle of the desert. We don’t know why they’re there, dressed in absurdly hot, tight Bavarian suits, but it’s clear they won’t be together long. Jasmin pulls out her suitcase and heads alone down the desolate road.

Then we meet Brenda (the worried-looking CCH Pounder), who owns the barely thriving Bagdad Cafe. When she spots Jasmin, it’s as if she’s seen the weirdest mirage imaginable. At first suspicious of this chubby foreigner, Brenda eventually welcomes Jasmin into her strange little world, which includes a dispossessed husband (G. Smokey Campbell), who mysteriously watches all the goings-on through binoculars from a safe distance.

There’s also Brenda’s musician son (Darron Flagg), her pretty young daughter (Monica Calhoun), a Native American cook (George Aquilar), a tattoo artist (Christine Kaufmann) and a Hollywood recluse turned painter, played with fierce comic intensity by Jack Palance.

It’s a strange family, but one that Jasmin takes to immediately. It’s as if the disturbance (which Adlon never really explains) in her own life now seems trivial when contrasted with these humanity hobos, and she feels ready to relax, to give in to the simpler pleasures around her. “Bagdad Cafe” is a quietly weird comedy about being happy and accepting the unexpected.

Not everybody loved this movie when it came out. None other than critic Pauline Kael felt it was a mess, just a lot of insignificance about insignificant people. But that misses the film’s (and Adlon’s) charm. His surprises come in a rush.

Adlon enjoys making minor-key spectacles of idiosyncrasies, and “Bagdad Cafe” is thick with them. The characters are exposed that way, and even when they seem too strange to be believed, you still have fun watching them. Beyond that, there’s the technical individuality in all of Adlon’s movies.

Music usually plays a big role, and it figures in “Bagdad Cafe.” The lilting incongruity of German polka music underscores that first fight between Jasmin and her husband, and musical flourishes bubble up throughout the film.

The cinematography of Bernd Heinl is sharp, with its bright colors and desiccated but somehow lusty landscapes. Not quite as odd as the camera work of Johanna Heer (a veteran Adlon cinematographer who gave “Sugarbaby” its garish, almost surreal veneer) but still personal enough to satisfy Adlon’s whims and inspirations.

* What: Percy Adlon’s “Bagdad Cafe.”

* When: Friday, at 7 and 9 p.m.

* Where: The UC Irvine Student Center Crystal Cove Auditorium.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to Jamboree Road, head south to Campus Drive, and take a left. Turn right on Bridge Road, and take it into the campus.

* Wherewithal: $2 to $4.

* Where to call: (714) 824-5588.

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(NR) Based on the story by Tennessee Williams about a businessman who enters the lives of two poor landowners and, through sex and betrayal, attempts to take their land away from them. Directed by Elia Kazan, it stars Karl Malden, Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach. Screens June 2 at 7 and 9 p.m. at UC Irvine’s Crystal Cove Auditorium. Sponsored by the UCI Film Society. $4 general admission, $3 for non-UCI students and seniors and $2 for UCI students. (714) 824-5588.