User Reviews

One of the other commenters mentioned that they almost walked out. If I hadn't been with my wife, who wanted to stay, I would have left. It's a shame, too, because I think it could have been a good movie. But this is easily one of the worst adapted screenplays I've ever seen. It starts out nowhere and it goes nowhere (I would say it goes nowhere fast, but it really goes nowhere slow...painfully slow). From time to time there are hints that something interesting might happen, or that there is potentially some depth underneath one of the characters, but that's all we get - hints. There is not a single payoff or revelation in the entire movie. Not that I need a slick plot to be entertained...I love a good meandering character study as much as the next indie buff. But these characters add up to nothing. For the entire duration of the film you don't care what happens to a single one of them. As a matter of fact, you almost start hoping they die, because at least a death might be more interesting than watching their inexplicable behavior, which is so strange and unpredictable that you'd think it in itself would be compelling, but it's not. Instead of quirky, noir-esquire characters acting in hard-boiled fashion, you simply recognize it immediately for what it is: a bunch of talented but miscast actors, brooding and raising their eyebrows while reading bizarre dialogue without a hint of relevant context. All this for two plodding, painfully slow hours. Awful.

That man can act! There's just no doubt about it. It's amazing how he is able to put aside his bad-boy notoriety and just sink his teeth into the meaty roles Hollywood seems to always throw his way (see Alexander, The Recruit, Tigerland etc.).

He shines again here as Arturo Bandini (yup, I was thinking the same thing you're probably thinking here too when I saw that name. I was wondering how he was going to pull off playing such a character but he does) an uninspired short-story writer who comes to California from Colorado hoping to find love (preferably a White Blonde chick with a bank account) and be inspired to write a successful novel. Salma Hayek, plays Camilla Lopez, an illiterate Mexican waitress who would rather be a White woman just to better her luck in life. Needless to say, this two character who are conventionally & logically wrong for each other collide one day at a bar and the sparks between them begin to fly immediately.

Arturo struggles to continue writing while Camilla provides a worthy distraction. As the relationship between the two builds, the ugly sides of both parties temporarily puts a damper on things. Arturo realises (albeit too late) that prejudice is the demon that has stood in his way all along and only when he gets over this is he able to produce his masterpiece.

Donald Sutherland in a severely underwritten role provides the voice as an aging but friendly neighbour. Eileen Aitkins manages to upstage the usually marvellous Hayek as the mysterious Vera Rivkin. Good cast, poor script but never the less it's watchable.

This movie is a shame. The character of Baldini can't be interpreted by an handsome guy like Colin Farrel. Arturo Baldini is a loser and misunderstood Italian guy, fighting for survival in L.A. In the film he appears like a cool guy that picks-up a Mexican sexy girl in a bar. The love between Camilla and Arturo is not real, is platonic...He desires her, but she just use him, they DO NOT MAKE LOVE AT ALL in the book, she doesn't fall in love with Arturo. In this way the film changes the main meaning of the book and I really do not understand why the director changed the plot in this way. He should had made another film, with another title, with different characters. I think it's really difficult to appreciate this movie if you have read the book. I hope you to be agree with me. I'm sorry for the English, I'm just a poor Italian Guy. Bye to everyone

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway

1939. John Fante writes "Ask the Dust", the tale of a young man embarking on a literary career. Years later a young Robert Towne stumbles upon and voraciously devours Fante's novels, most of which attempt to paint a portrait of early 20th century Los Angeles. Decades pass. Towne embarks on his own literary career. He scores big with his screenplay for Roman Polanski's "Chinatown", a LA set noir influenced and flavoured by Fante. Towne and Fante personally meet in the 1970s. Fante dies in 1983. Two decades later Towne adapts "Ask the Dust" for the screen.

Those looking for a faithful adaptation of Fante's novel will be disappointed. Towne has been sculpted "Ask the Dusk" into a deliberate, five-way romance: a distillation of Towne's long-time love for Fante, Towne's adoration of noir (and its assorted signs, trinkets and decor), Towne and Fante's love for early Los Angeles (its history, its characters, locales and heartbeat), Towne's idealisation of the Romantic image of the struggling artist, and the in-film love affair between an artist (played by Colin Farrell) and a Mexican waitress (Salma Hayek).

The film can't touch Nicholas Ray's "In A Lonely Place", but to those attuned to Towne's very specific yearnings it's a very good film. Towne's no visualist, but he's a good enough writer to capture the essence of a noirish LA, with its flapping curtains, decrepit apartments, barflies, lonely hearts, drunks, scroungers, con-men, palm trees and sun-baked pavements. It's a nostalgia rush, all of which is married to an idealised, heavily romanticised portrait of a struggling artist – super good looking of course – who spends his time bedding lush Mexican women (a bosomy Salma Hayek) or sitting valiantly at a typewriter, pounding prose on page while chiaroscuro lighting bathes his body.

The most interesting thing about the film, though, is its narrative arc. Farrell, who plays our budding artist (a surrogate for both Towne and Fante), has a massive insecurity complex and hates himself because he's Italian. Of course many burgeoning artists develop their artistic talents as a means of assuaging personal issues (alienation, rootlessness, self esteem problems etc). Art them becomes a means of reconnection; the product of the outsider looking inwards. The marginality of the artist then often results in the artist developing, as a sort of self-defence mechanism, a sense of superiority or inflated ego ("I hate them for making me an outsider", "I want to be with them", "I am too good to be with them", "I'm a great artist", "superior", "going places", "don't need them", "so confused!" etc). As the artist must put him or herself far out on the line, and often stand alone, such an inflation – or an almost bipolar flip-flop from feelings of unworthiness to massive self-exaltation – then becomes all that keeps her or him persevering.

Now the Farrell character, because he is supremely self-loathing, begins to lash out at anyone and anything that reminds him of his own lowliness. One of his targets is Salma Hayek's character (too beautiful for such a role), a poor Mexican waitress. She reminds him of that which he wishes to escape. By the film's end, however, Farrell drops his hate, his aloofness, and begins to identify with others, empathise and speak up for them. Being a writer then becomes not a mark of status, but a duty. This tension itself increasingly obsessed Fante, his books ostensibly revolving around arrogant characters seeking independence, fame and success, while actually serving as a vehicle to introduce readers to a city, its inhabitants and their plights. In the film, Farrell's re-connection with the marginalised - the very subjects of his future art - is symbolised as a series of romantic or sexual encounters with physically deformed women and society's dregs. The film is not about "immigration", "racism" and "poverty", as some claim, but something more generalised: artists or spectators forging empathic connections with their objects. As empathy by definition cannot function without imagination, you might say empathy is itself a kind of art. This is why it is important that Towne prolong the sex scene between Farrell and Hayek, and why it is important that it is at her most desirable moment that she cough and be sickly.

Incidentally, evolutionary speaking, empathy or "sharing someone else's emotion" need not yield pro-social behaviour. If perceiving another person in a painful circumstance elicits personal, physical or emotional distress, then the observer may tend not to attend fully to the other's experience and as a result seem to lack sympathetic behaviours. As empathic concern can lead to personal distress, such "commections" are also often blocked out. This may explain why, statistically, excessively empathetic humans are less likely to be pro-social and perhaps why artists prefer to disconnect and engage with the world safely by proxy.

8/10 – Interesting, but somewhat poorly directed and should have been better written. Will appeal only to noir-heads, artists and romantics. Seek out Fante's much copied novel. Worth one viewing.

I thought ''Ask the Dust'' would be a nice movie,but I need to say that it doesn't have anything special, it is an ordinary romantic movie with some drama during the Great Depression in the 30's. Some things are so obvious, like when you see the character Camilla Lopez coughing and blood splits out, you know she is going to die, eventually. (By the way, it remembered me the scene where Satine, from Moulin Rouge, is sick of tuberculosis and coughing a lot, splitting blood in a hankie like Camilla)

PS1:I am surprised to see Tom Cruise is one of the producers of this movie.

PS2: No, I didn't read the book. But the theme is interesting. This thing about being from other country and trying to settle down in other place interests me a lot. And I think it so beautiful that both Camilla, who wanted a Caucasian American to marry and share his name, and Arturo, who also wanted a blonde American to marry, fall in love, showing that in the end, those things doesn't matter at all.

Ask the Dust" has just been released locally so I took time out to drive over to the Shattuck in Berkeley and check it out this afternoon along with 3 other people in the auditorium.

Colin Farrell plays an Italian American from Colorado who goes to L.A. to make his mark as a writer. It's depression era southern California but you'd never know it except for the cheap lighting and an occasional scene showing people wearing hand me downs and slumping along Hope Street. The producers (Robert Towne wrote/directed) actually built a replica downtown L.A. on a sound stage in, get this, South Africa!! Complete with Angel's Flight.. the cable car that climbed up Bunker Hill. All the period dazzle, though, just confuses a story that down deep doesn't make much sense. Our hero is down to his last nickle (literally, Towne has the coin in blunt close up so we don't miss the point... and so we'll recognize an actual buffalo nickel), goes across the street from his shabby hotel for a cup of coffee and is waited on by (tah-dah) Selma Hayek, a Mexican hayseed who wears (snicker) sandals while pouring the coffee. The two of them snarl at each other. He says mean things about Mexicans. She says mean things about Italians. We just know the two of them are going to wind up making the two back enchilada before long... actually it takes an hour before they get it on in a beach house our writer has inexplicably gotten enough money to rent. If you know anything about L.A. you'll wonder how Robert Towne, who has made some pretty important L.A. pictures, like Chinatown, could have gotten the ambiance so screwy. The whole feel of the film is claustrophobic with a lot of the action either in the writer's hotel room, the bedroom at the beach, or the slickly designed street between the hotel and the restaurant. The one character who looks truly "L.A." is Justin Kirk (of "Angels in America") who plays a sleazy bartender. At least I think he's supposed to be sleazy. This guy is so good looking, has such a commanding screen presence that even Colin shrinks before our eyes. Justin comes and Justin goes... alas. So we're stuck with Colin Farrell, whose street swagger is a wee bit precious, and Selma, whose tits stick out like punctuation marks... there's a scene of the two of them frolicking nude in the surf. At one point he mentions that they're 10 minutes from downtown. Where the hell could that beach be in 1930s L.A. before freeways?

She starts coughing about midway through the movie and dies in his arms in the wind up at a shack in the desert. He finishes his book and drives out to where he's buried her body. Can't find the cross that marked the grave. Tosses the book into the air. It lands on its spine with the pages slowly turning to the dedication page. Guess whose name is on it!

I wanted so much to like this movie... no, I wanted to *love* this movie. 1930's L.A. Robert Towne. Based on a book by a guy who had a reputation like Nathaniel West, blistering prose, bravado writing. I guess I'll have to break down and buy the book. The movie sure didn't do it for me. (But Justin Kirk's eyes... omigod!)