‘Trixie’ Toys at Length With Romance, Danger

Alan Rudolph aptly describes “Trixie,” his latest ensemble piece, as “screwball noir.” In the title role, Emily Watson plays a drugstore security guard who dreams of becoming a private detective and who never met a metaphor she couldn’t mix. Quick thinking on the job lands her a chance to take a more promising assignment working undercover at a mountain resort casino in an unnamed state, and in an instant, she’s caught up in romance and danger.

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Clocking in at just six minutes short of two hours, “Trixie” is too much of a good thing. Trixie’s malapropisms are laid on so thick you begin wondering if she is suffering from some disorder. Still, so much of the film is so funny, inspired and sophisticated, the performances so richly nuanced, that many viewers, Rudolph admirers in particular, will be inclined to forgive a little self-indulgence on the part of this authentic auteur.

Working the 9 p.m.-5 a.m. shift, Trixie is quickly befriended by boozy lounge entertainer Kirk (Nathan Lane), a world-weary celebrity impressionist-singer, and by Ruby Pearli (Brittany Murphy), a young glamour girl who hangs out at the bar on the lookout for a main squeeze. Trixie, in turn, is zeroed in on by a certified lounge lizard, Dex (Dermot Mulroney), a sexy dude with Valentino sideburns and abundant confidence with women.

Trixie flatly rejects his advances, only to end up agreeing to come visit him at a yacht he tends for a brash developer, Red Rafferty (Will Patton). She winds up, unexpectedly, on a boat ride with Red; Sen. Drummond Avery (Nick Nolte), a silver-haired, silver-tongued orator type; Dawn Sloane (Lesley Ann Warren), a nightclub singer of uncertain age; and a pair of Rafferty’s goons, the Deflore brothers (Mark Acheson, Vincent Gale).

Rudolph understands that you can smell corruption in this group without having to spell out just how Rafferty and the senator will be slicing the pie. Not long after Trixie is back on terra firma, she’s investigating blackmail and murder.

If Rudolph goes on a bit, he nonetheless is using his screen time to probe character and not just pile up plot complications for their own sake; if anything, he is so incisive that you’re in danger of taking this comedy too seriously. As a director, Rudolph is most empathetic with actors; and as a writer, he has--in this instance as in many others--come up with material rich in humor and complexity.

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Nolte keeps showing us more and more facets of the senator, who gleams like a highly polished, but deeply flawed diamond, a man still in his tanned and rugged prime but so rotten to the core, he’s ready to implode whether he realizes it or not. What the senator has to say about Nixon and Eisenhower--and much else--to the increasingly baffled Trixie is hilarious.

Warren’s Dawn is a lovely woman too mature for the flirtatious sexpot routine--and she knows it. However, she persists in doing it but is increasingly desperate to escape to a different life with a measure of security.

With Dex, Trixie brings out a basic decency that’s inconvenient for him, but which he will not betray. Mulroney continues to build his reputation as a first-rate leading man with a flair for comedy, and “Trixie” offers the protean Watson a refreshing change of pace from such grim fare as “Breaking the Waves,” “Hilary and Jackie” and “Angela’s Ashes.”

Filmed in Vancouver (as so many movies are these days), “Trixie” is a handsome, well-designed film typical of Rudolph, and it has a wonderful score by Mark Isham and Roger Neill that reflects the film’s ever-changing moods.

* MPAA rating: R, for some language, sexuality and violence. Times guidelines: some intense sensuality, language, but the violence is fairly mild.

‘Trixie’

Emily Watson: Trixie Zurbo

Dermot Mulroney: Dex Lang

Nick Nolte: Sen. Drummond Avery

Nathan Lane: Kirk Stans

Brittany Murphy: Ruby Pearli

Lesley Ann Warren: Dawn Sloane

Will Patton: Red Rafferty

A Sony Pictures Classics release. Writer-director Alan Rudolph. Executive producer James McLindon. Producer Robert Altman. Cinematographer Jan Kiesser. Editor Michael Ruscio. Music Mark Isham and Roger Neill. Costumes Monique Prudhomme. Production designers Richard Paris, Linda Del Rosario. Art director Brian Kane. Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes.

At selected theaters.