I'm Losing You

Bruce Wagner's Hollywood novels have a particular horror-movie frisson: a can't-turn-the-page-but-can't-stop-turning tension. A dark bill of goods read by a sardonic M.D. to a terminal patient, the typical Wagner story is L.A. loserdom braced onto a Renaissance canvas--a gossipy Movieline-magazine horror story given epic proportions. Wagner so loathes the calmly powerful, not-so-bright people who thwart him that he visits every kind of calamity on them--crack-induced strokes, cancer, AIDS, tabloid sex-torture. It's as if the power of his imagination and the boil of his frustration crashed into each other and made a monster hybrid--insider bitterness raised to a Mailerian scale, where the felicities of a crashed deal take on the properties of the goings-on in a Nazi death camp, or a terminal ward. A blurb in the jacket for Wagner's masterly "Force Majeure" read, "Wagner lavishes on Hollywood the kind of attention that novelists once lavished on sex, or the Second World War." Ain't it the truth: Wagner turns bellyaching into high opera.

Wagner's 1996 novel "I'm Losing You" was described by John Updike as "inhabiting a universe so cratered it's hard to turn the pages." The novel is a Boschian cry of despair from the bowels of Century City. In his new movie version, that Munchian shriek is turned into a soft, Cronenbergian whisper. The has-beens and never-weres of Wagner's ultimate dystopian L.A. are viewed not with sadomasochistic coolness here, but with gentleness and, dare I say it, love. There's nothing sentimental in this picture, and not a frame that isn't perfumed by death, but there is a quality that took me off guard. I'M LOSING YOU is a reminder, almost inaudible in this cratered blockbuster universe, of the humanistic potential of movies--the possibility of art as a guide for human beings to navigate their way out of hopeless predicaments. The insider edge is off the movie; unlike the book, it isn't about the perfectly poised name-drop. The movie might as well be taking place in Ohio: the substance of it is in its insight into beleaguered characters trying to buttress themselves with fame and money against catastrophes that claim the Hot 100 and Joe Nobody alike.

Wagner has assembled the strongest ensemble cast since BOOGIE NIGHTS. Rosanna Arquette is a strange overlap of the luminous and the feral as an art evaluater who makes a melodramatic discovery about her roots that leads to a reconnection with a mystical Jewish practice. Andrew McCarthy, as a fallen eighties actor, goes places you wouldn't imagine him capable of--he suggests a warmer, less remote Edward Norton. As a fortyish Hollywood rich kid who's HIV-positive, Elizabeth Perkins fairly scorches a hole in the movie--the rage of a magnificent woman pushed out of the box before her time lights up every scene she's in. And Amanda Donohoe, Buck Henry and Laraine Newman all have potent brief moments.

The pitfall to Wagner's genius is generally that he uses his gift for conjuring catastrophe only cruelly--it sometimes feels as if there's no possible response to his books except to faint. Here, he's put that talent to use: he questions the tactics we use to deal with the undealable. In a stroke of ill fortune endemic to the characters in Wagner's books, I'M LOSING YOU was released on the same day as EYES WIDE SHUT and THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. I can only hope someone within the sound of my voice will see this beautiful, almost-great movie before, like its characters, it passes into the ether.

Having read the book by Bruce Wagner, but not having seen the 1998 screen adaptation, we decided to take a look based on the strong cast in it. Mr. Wagner wrote the screen treatment of his own novel. This is a film that offers some interesting points, although, it appears it read much better in the page than what we watch on the screen.

The basic problem with the film is that we don't care much for these characters. They seem to have everything, but yet, they are incapable of connecting with one another. The revelation at the beginning of the film about Perry's grave illness doesn't bring his family to bond with one another in the face of what the future will bring.

The son Bertie is an aspiring actor who is going through a rough period in his life. Tragedy strikes in a way he didn't expect, yet, this man doesn't seem to register any emotion. The adopted girl, Rachel, gets too deep into an area that might give her closure with his dead parents. AIDS enters the picture in the form of Aubrey, the beautiful woman who is also having her own crisis in dealing with her reality.

Frank Langella, as Perry does a good job in his take of the rich man facing his own mortality. Andrew McCarthy tries his best to convey a certain degree of decency to his Bertie. Rosanna Arquette has one of the best opportunities in the film. Elizabeth Perkins's Aubrey is not seen too long for us to care enough for her. Salome Jens, an under used actress plays Perry's wife Diantha. Buck Henry, Amanda Donohue, Ed Begley Jr, and the rest of the cast make adequate contributions to the film.

Ultimately, the film, as presented by Mr. Wagner feels empty because we don't connect to these people at all.

To me, this movie was a "been there done that" type. There was nothing new or revealing in any manner of its presentation or otherwise. I tend to agree with reviewer on several movies that I rent but this movie was really hard to watch without prematurely rewinding.

Illness, death, and a family's reaction to it have been the subject of a multitude of films, but the potential there for high drama is so great that the vein could hardly be exhausted. When I first started watching "I'm Losing You" (and no, I didn't read the book) and saw Frank Langella's character receive his terminal bad news, I assumed the focus would be on him and how his family handled the crisis. I was surprised, then, when it turned out that the Grim Reaper was all over the place, stalking characters major and minor.

Which would have been fine if this film had been the great meditation on death and dying that it so obviously wants to be. Maybe there just wasn't enough time to thoroughly develop all the characters and plot elements, but I surely wouldn't have wanted a longer film. Consequently nothing in it really reached or impressed me. Particularly poorly handled, I thought, was Rosanna Arquette's character, whose mental breakdown and interest in/obsession with with a Jewish funeral ritual were not very well-explained, at least not to my satisfaction. The ritual, by the way, was interesting from a cultural and educational point of view, but as a part of the film it was my least favorite. I disliked Julie Ariola's pious character every time she was on the screen, for some reason. And I found myself again wondering why Arquette has such a hard time finding roles that are worthy of her.

Apparently many people found this film edifying, but I would proceed with caution. One thing proponents and detractors alike could probably agree on: if you're looking for a tear-jerker, go elsewhere. There probably wasn't a wet eye in the house when this film was playing.

This is an almost stereotypical example of a good book being turned into a bad movie. However, there are three interesting details that make this case unique: 1. The guy who wrote the book is actually the same guy who made the movie! 2. The book mocks Hollywood culture in many different ways, so making the book into a movie is somewhat ironic. 3. The movie is really, really bad.

Why isn't the movie as good as the book? There are too many reasons to list. Bad casting, the movie lacks the humor of the book, key scenes in the book aren't in the movie, etc. Pretty typical stuff.

If you've read the book, it might be worth it to see the movie though. It's almost unwatchable, but you might want to tough it out just so you can puzzle over it and ask: "What was Bruce Wagner thinking?"