Throughout the history of cinema, there have been dozens, or even hundreds of film noirs...or should it be filmes noire (pardon my French)? There have been dozens of ordinary joes, played by men like Bogart and Fred MacMurray; hundreds of femmes fatale: Bacall, Stanwyck, Dunaway; countless ruthless villains: Edward G. Robinson, John Huston, Sydney Greenstreet. Hot August nights in southern border towns, unspoken sexual tension, dames worth dying or killing for, betrayal, death, justice, disillusionment. Bottles of scotch and packs of Luckies. These are all images burnt into our collective consciousness, thanks to the movies. With Palmetto, Volker Schlondorff exercises the genre one more time, and finds all the familiar icons still very potent.
Harry Barber, recently released from prison for a crime he didn't commit, finds himself back in Palmetto, Florida, the most sordid and corrupt little burg in the south. His good and decent artist girlfriend Nina (Gina Gershon) puts him up in her studio as he tries to get back on his feet: shades of Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo.
Barber spends most of his time in one of those bars that are covered with a thin layer of grime and where everyone is drenched in sweat. Only in the movies would anyone patronize such a cruddy-looking drinking establishment. Harry is there when another icon of the movies enters: the blonde bombshell, the woman who could make any man do anything, here incarnated by Elisabeth Shue. Barber half-heartedly tries to rob her, but instead allows her to buy him a drink. In a '90's touch, however, she holds her cigarette without ever smoking it, while he holds a glass of whiskey he never drinks.
She has a job for him to do. She is the wife of a rich by old and dying man (Rolf Hoppe), but has a plan to bilk him out of a small fortune so that his prodigal daughter (Chloe Sevigny) can run free. Shue's character has a fake kidnapping planned. All she needs, she claims, is a man to make the calls, send the ransom note, and pick up the money.
This wouldn't be much of a movie if everything went according to plan, though, would it? It is an immutable law of crime movies that at least one character be a double-crosser, preferably more than one. It is a law of newer crime movies (Fargo, for instance) that the crimes should not always be committed in competent fashion. It is more fun to see things go wrong.
A big twist in Palmetto is that once the stuff hits the fan, Barber, a former journalist, is hired as official police spokesman. As such, he watches on helplessly as the police unravel his clues and draw closer and closer to the truth. As was seen in Fargo, there is a wonderful voyeuristic sensation to be had by watching a guilty man wilt under pressure and the realization that he is doomed. Woody Harrelson is not quite in the same league as William H. Macy at portraying guilt, but he still makes a truly hapless and fundamentally stupid Harry. In some later scenes, Harrelson looks like a drawing out of Frank Miller's Sin City come to life. Like any proper film noir "hero," he is a sympathetic guy, but not a good one.
Elisabeth Shue is a more conventional femme fatale. She's the kind of woman (whoops, I mean "dame") who knows every eye is on her, who knows she can make any man do what she wants, and who feels neither guilt nor any other sensation. If Hitchcock were alive today, Shue is the type of ice-cold beauty (in the Tippi Hedren-Eva Marie Saint-Grace Kelly tradition) that he would have starring in his films. She's the type of woman who makes me wish I could write like a hard-boiled detective thriller.
The supporting cast is mixed. Gina Gershon is appealing, but surely she is too exotic a performer for the more vanilla role of the long-suffering girlfriend. I would have imagine a Minnie Driver or the like in the role: someone not conventionally beautiful, but still sympathetic. Michael Rapaport simply will not do as a nasty security guard. I liked him in Cop Land, but here he has no idea for the role or the film's atmosphere. Tom Wright makes an okay cop and Harry's de facto brother-in-law, but doesn't jump out of the screen. Chloe Sevigny as the daughter is quite the nymphet. Geez, after The Tin Drum was banned in Oklahoma, I'd have thought that Schlondorff might be more conservative in his portrayal of young people, but, no fear. It is unfortunate that Rolf Hoppe's role is so small here, as he was absolutely tremendous as the general in Mephisto: one of the all-time great movie villains.
To the film's detractors, Yes, Palmetto's plot may be contrived, but I appreciate the movie for what it does with the plot. Its use of film icons of makes Palmetto more than acceptable viewing. In any case, isn't it nice to see a film noir in the theater for once instead of on AMC?
Three stars
Copyright 1998 by Dale G. Abersold
