Une Image Perdue

It takes a while to get into the movie's mood - Modine's druggy trawl through a razor-sharp Miami is not very well differentiated despite Ferrara's excellent handling, teetering at the edge of surrender to the prevailing decadence but always retaining a distinct alienation and fascinated disgust. Later on the style becomes more tightly formal and controlled, befitting Modine's cleared up state, and Ferrara's portrayal of his obsession and disquietude is very effective in a more conventionally expositional way. Towards the end the mechanics of the ultimate revelation really take over, but Hopper's final long profane shouting fit at Modine after he learns the truth is too hard-hitting to be set aside, and the high-risk final image is oddly touching - the movie is a plausible account of a true lost soul grappling for stability in a world of temptation and internal darkness, with neat (albeit stunt) casting.

No one can make guilt look as beautiful as Abel Ferrara. In 'The Blackout' he drags you down into a mud of obsession, self-loathing and substance-abuse, showing you that anxiety can be a trip in itself. The timeline is torn and bent out of shape, and it feels like half the movie is a flashback. Combine that with several layers of superimposed tripping and artistic handheld video footage of erotic dancers and you have something resembling 'The Blackout'. The acting is almost as excellent as the direction. Matthew Modine plays surprisingly well as the tortured Hollywood actor, and both Beatrice Dalle and Claudia Schiffer play their (albeit flat) characters flawlessly. I feel however that Dennis Hopper has started regurgitating what has become his only personality, and it wears thin. I usually love his performance, but in this film I could have done without him. Some will stress the need for a clearly defined plot, thereby completely dismissing efforts like this. A shame, since Ferrara is one of the few directors who can convincingly create a view into the depths of human depravation. The film is filled with great visuals, and carries a very recognizable Ferrara-look, feel and theme.

I don't understand all the negative reviews at imdb about this movie. There are a lot of things I liked. First, the camera techniques are wonderful and capture that floaty feeling when a person is high, confused, and purposeless. Second, i love the idea of a person blacking out during a critical moment of their lives, and feeling the need to reconstruct the events in order to know themselves. This movie did a great job of using this device as the plot. Third, the ending came as a surprise...it is not revealed until the last 10 minutes and it comes as a surprise that feels quite right.

I might add that I loved the scene when Modine drinks again, alone in a hotel room, and feels that familiar, egotistical feeling, as if drinking and getting high are enough to make a person important or substantive.

Back in the hazy days of grip/electric life, I got a call to work as the BB Grip on my 2nd (and last) Abel Ferrara film - "The Blackout". I accepted the gig with one non-negotiable caveat - I would never be willing to enter what I term "the meat grinder" (defined as any space within 150 feet of the madman auteur). "The Blackout" IS Abel Ferrara....albeit a PG-13 version. In a sense, the experience of making the film was an act of performance art...art lived as actual "life" or perhaps life lived as a Bosch nightmare...on the one hand, it was genius; on the other, pure madness. What remains is a snippet of documentary into the soul of AF.

Abel Ferrara's "Blackout" stars Matthew Modine as Matty, a self-loathing addict and Hollywood actor. Essentially a feature length short story, the film watches as Matty attempts to both crawl his way out of addiction and atone for an event which happened during a memory blackout. To say any more would be to spoil Ferrara's plot.

Suffice to say that Ferrara's aesthetic perfectly echoes Matty's hallucinatory mindset. Hazy and trance-like, and set in the slime-world of a neon-lit Miami, the film moves like a lava lamp. When he's not salivating over drugs and booze, Matty's knee deep in strippers, beautiful women and pornography. This, of course, all echoes Ferrara's own life; he was himself once an addict and pornographer.

"Blackout's" plot eventually becomes something akin to Hitchcock's "Vertigo". Here Matty is revealed to be a deeply disturbed man who chases doubles and who hungers irrationally for ghostly women. Unsurprisingly, Ferrara's portrayal of an addict/alcoholic is sympathetic and crackles with authenticity; Ferrara knows his material well. Strange for a film which features copious female nudity, the film sympathises with its women. Ferrara's nudity may be gratuitous, but is rarely erotic. The film co-stars a mostly inept Dennis Hopper and a occasionally raw and powerful Mathew Modine.

7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.