With Go Go Tales, it’s once again Abel Ferrara’s party, and he’ll indulge in boisterous craziness if he wants to. A loving ode to a bygone Manhattan and an affectionate affirmation of outcast solidarity – as well as an allegory for its creator’s career – Ferrara’s latest charts one crazy night at Ray Ruby’s Paradise, a downtown strip joint run by habitual loser, deep-in-debt Ray (a sterling Willem Dafoe), who’s about to be evicted by a landlord (Sylvia Miles) intent on turning the joint into a Bed Bath & Beyond, and whose lottery scam has worked to perfection – except, that is, for the fact that he can’t locate the winning ticket. Ray’s search for his meal ticket is the story’s primary running thread, though Ferrara’s film is in truth a loosely knit collection of vignettes about the various gents and ladies who work at, or frequent, the establishment. These include a new stripper who makes out with a dog onstage (Asia Argento, not surprisingly), to a chef (Pras) who takes his “gourmet hot dogs” very, very seriously, to Ray’s salon owner brother and financier (Matthew Modine), who during the talent show finale – in which a crooning Ray and his employees live out their fanciful dreams of stardom – has his pooch play a tune on a miniature piano. Not everything flies (like the scene in which a doctor discovers that his wife is a dancer), but Go Go Tales’ sleazy energy, sense of community, black humor and bittersweet nostalgia are infectious, and nicely epitomized by Miles’ closing-credits punk-rock anthem “Bed, Bath & Beyond, Motherfucker.”
(2007 New York Film Festival)
Bed, Bath & Beyond MOTHERFUCKER.
Posted by: Aaron Hillis | October 08, 2007 at 05:02 AM