Big Bad Love

This essentially comic movie tells a suitably disjointed story of the crazed writing life in the South. All the players -- Arliss Howard, Debra Winger, the underrated Paul Le Mat, Rosanna Arquette, and Angie Dickinson -- are excellent. Instead of spoonfeeding us, the movie lets us discover the characters' past lives and motivations. It contains grand images: someone's novel scattered in a giant patch of kudzu; a painting in progress on the side of a rusted railroad car. Some people will like it just for the music, including by Tom Waits.

Big Bad Love achieves what few films even strive for -- that gritty level of believability (laced with wonderful dream sequences throughout) that makes it seem as though the camera was simply dropped into the center of these characters' lives.

There are a number of wonderful lines, and few scenes funnier than when unsuccessful writer, Leon Barlow (played by Howard), sits down to type a response to a letter from a magazine editor, rejecting one of his short stories.

Not to say that the film isn't uneven at times. Howard (who not only stars in the film, but also directs), remains true to his narrative, which does become difficult to watch as Barlow becomes more self-destructive. The dream sequences become muddled after a while, but only because that's how Barlow is experiencing them.

Performances by Paul Le Mat, Debra Winger, Angie Dickinson, and Rosanna Arquette are all very strong. The soundtrack is top-notch.

I highly recommend this film, particularly as an anti-dote to the vapid doggerel Hollywood continues to churn out like link sausages.

One has to admire an actor like Arliss Howard for his courage in bringing this film to the screen. It is a painful story to watch, but it has its own rewards. The movie played locally only for a very short time, and sadly, it disappeared until it was shown recently on cable, for which we are grateful.

Perhaps with another director, some of the kinks in the film would have been ironed out. There are scenes that are just too painful to watch. Our hearts go out to Barlow and what he is going through at this time of his life. His writing is brilliant, but most everyone he submits his novels to, end up rejecting them. Barlow cannot take another defeat in his life.

To make matters worse, his divorce from Marilyn is driving him insane. We often wonder how these two unmatched pair thought they were going to make it at all. In bad marriages, both parties remain bitter over every little detail dictated by the court when they must separate.

Arliss Howard, as Barlow gives a heart felt performance. We see him sinking lower and lower without a safety net to hold him. Unfortunately, Debra Winger's time on screen is very short. Ms Winger makes this woman an enigma since we don't really know where her head is at. The other actors are good. Paul Le Mat, Rosanna Arquette and above all, a short, but very excellent turn by Angie Dickinson, make us care about the fate of these people.

A surreal movie based on a short story collection by Mississippi writer Larry Brown. Arliss Howard directs and stars as Leon Barlow, a drunken writer who struggles with the demands of his ex-wife (Debra Winger), his children and his best friend (Paul LeMat). He is a failure on almost every level – certainly personally and professionally – and Howard doesn't shy away from his protagonist's shortcomings. The resulting film is a meandering look at the creative process, and how one man messed up his life. It's a well crafted directorial debut from Howard who handles this quiet tale of an artist's redemption with a firm hand.

Unfortunately, Big Bad Love, for all its undeniably good anti-mainstream intentions, fails to come off even as the cutting-edge manifestation it tries so strenuously to be. Mr. Howard directs himself as a long-failed writer named Barlow, who keeps mailing manuscripts to various publishers and getting them all back with a variety of rejection letters. The returned manila envelopes bulk large in his rustic roadside mail box. But no matter: Barlow keeps stuffing the box with new manila envelopes. Words keep floating around his head, and even on the screen and on the soundtrack. Even big words you never expect to hear in the Mississippi hill country, except when you remember that you're very close to William Faulkner land and a rich Southern prose tradition that is to American literature almost what 20th-century Irish drama is to 20th-century British theater. And Barlow himself is not simply a fictional figure, but also an approximation of the thought processes of writer Larry Brown.

Big Bad Love actually begins deceptively, with fleeting glances of a bridal couple laughingly fornicating in a bathtub. When a fully dressed Barlow emerges in sleepy, grimy solitude to answer the door, we realize with the help of some pointed dialogue that we have been misled by an idealized memory of Barlow's long-ago marriage to Marilyn (Ms. Winger), from whom he is now separated. Currently, Barlow's only steady companion is a much-married layabout named Monroe (Paul Le Mat) who gets house-painting jobs for Barlow, shares his beer binges and flirts with Velma (Rosanna Arquette), a petty heiress he finally marries.

Barlow receives occasional visits from Marilyn when she drops off their two children for a paternal visit. Alan, the older of the two, keeps his emotional distance from his father, but Alisha is suffering from an incurable disease that foreshadows one of the catastrophes that is going to transform Barlow into a productive writer, much to the surprise of Marilyn and his mother, played by Angie Dickinson.

When you think about it, Big Bad Love has one of the strongest casts you will see in movies this year–and not a bankable one among them. In addition to Ms. Winger, Mr. Howard, Mr. Le Mat, Ms. Dickinson and Ms. Arquette, there is Michael Parks being remarkable in a grizzled cracker-barrel part. And you think some more, and you begin to understand what Ms. Winger hates about Hollywood and all its who's-hot-and-who's-not arbiters of talent, with a calendar in one hand and an adding machine in the other. I simply can't believe that an actress as gifted as Ms. Winger can't find a decent role to play in her mid-40's. The camera can be cruel, granted, but in Europe an actress of Ms. Winger's caliber would be kept busy in grown-up movies.

Ultimately, though Big Bad Love is not without misfortunes and misadventures, it is mercifully free of malignancy. And though the writer as hero is not an ideal movie subject, it is nothing if not morally refreshing.