CINEMA: Shaun de Waal
DOMINIC SENA’S film Kalifornia, which is a few years old now, was not a big hit in Britain or America. We may never have seen it on the big screen here had it not been for Brad Pitt’s recent success, or the ascendance of Juliette Lewis in films like Natural Born Killers, where she plays a similar role.
Brian Kessler (David Duchovny), a young writer, and his companion, Carrie Laughlin (Michelle Forbes), a photographer, are planning a book about famous American murders and decide to tour the sites of these killings. They need another couple to share the expenses of the trip, though, and the fellow travellers they find are Adele Corners (Lewis) and Early Grayce (Pitt).
By then, the audience has already been introduced to the latter couple, and the contrast between the two pairs is what drives the movie from here on: the city-slicker yuppies with arty pretensions versus the redneck union of violence and naivety. For the first two-thirds of the film this juxtaposition, and the way it works itself out as they travel, is compelling.
There is also an intriguing irony in the way Brian’s intellectual fascination with mortality is set against the casual way Early himself deals in death, exploding all the comfortable, civilised assumptions that propel Brian’s project. The audience’s sympathies become muddled: one wants to see the yuppie humbled but Sena and scriptwriter Tim Metcalfe can’t quite seem to go all the way. The potential exploration of contemporary American morality is no more than superficial.
Kalifornia is a well-made thriller, with some excellent set pieces and brilliant, chilling performances from Lewis and Pitt. They alone are sufficient reason to see it. But the interesting tensions that the film initially sets up seem to promise more than just another well-made thriller, and disappointment sets in when it reverts to the tired Hollywood cliches of good and evil.