Big Bad Love

Arliss Howard acts and directs in "Big Bad Love" which he co-produced with his wife, Debra Winger. Ms. Winger returns to the screen as the former spouse of Howard. She delivers a performance that made me regret her hiatus away from the set. From a starting point as a more or less typical divorced mother with kids she develops her character into a wrenching portrait of both strength and vulnerability.

In a series of illusions, hallucinations and surreal flashbacks, wounded Vietnam vet Leon (Howard) devotes his life to three endeavors: fiction writing, drinking and attempting, through the fog of alcohol, to be a dad to his little boy and girl. His rejection notices are so many that even after wallpapering a room with them he needs a fifty-five gallon oil drum next to his desk to hold the rest. Voiceovers read the letters which contain just about every cliche from the canon of editorial rejection imaginable.

Leon seems to be welded to beer cans - except when he hits the hooch for a change. I don't think anyone writes coherently when he's three sheets to the wind but this guy can.

As a dad he is both devoted and distracted, the often exasperating but permanent part of many a divorced mom's life.

The setting is a rural part of Mississippi that some reviewers have described as beautiful but which I found desolate and depressing (but that's my Gotham viewpoint, no insult intended to the locals portrayed in this film).

Arliss's character, Leon, has a strong friendship with Monroe, a buddy from combat. Unfortunately the lubricant for their relationship inevitably leads to big time trouble. Without excess sentimentality, the two friends navigate a small world that presents minor pleasures and real disappointments. The friendship is deep and real but with a touch of middle-aged regression to adolescence.

The acting here is as strong as the Mississippi drawl. There is little predicability beyond the reality that NOTHING will stop Arliss from writing and sending his many, many manuscripts off to faceless editors, apparently all or mostly in New York.

This film needs a strong word-of-mouth boost to get the audiences it deserves and it'll probably mostly be seen on VHS and DVD. Howard's and Winger's strong and affecting acting offer, I hope, promises for a renewed future for both in film.

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.

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.

During the entire decade of the 1980's and toward the early 1990's,Debra Winger was one of the hottest actresses working in Hollywood at the time and she had a beau of leading actors that took her to the title of the box office queen. Some of her leading men were John Travolta,Richard Gere,Marlon Brando,and Jack Nicholson as well as with actors Robert Duvall and Ed Harris. However,she would win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1983 for "Terms of Endearment",and after that she went in submission for a while.......only to resurface.

However,Debra Winger makes her return here in one of the best performances of her career. "Big Bad Love" is a film based on the writings of Mississippi author Larry Brown. She people think that she retired from the cimema in recent years(her last film was nine years ago under the direction of Bernardo Bertlucci),but takes this chance to star opposite her real-life husband Arliss Howard(who stars,directs,and wrote the script). Howard plays,Leon Barlow,a depressive,alcoholic Vietnam veteran and aspiring writer. Aside from holding a candle for hs ex-wife(Winger),most of Barlow's time focuses on daily trips to the mailbox,sending off plies of manuscripts,and following enough rejection letters to wallpaper hs bathroom. He is played as a sympathetic ne'er-do -well,lovable enough to be excused for shirking his familial responsiblities as a father(including his two precious children),until the end of the film,when tragedy strikes and Barlow is forced out of his cynical melancholy.

Strong performances from Angie Dickinson as well(in a grand return to the silver screen)as Rosanna Arquette(whom I haven't heard from since the 1990's)and Paul Le Mat. This movie had the heart,the guts and the soul that makes it a piece of grand cimematic work. A must see!

Rating: **** out of *****

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.