Gas Food Lodging
1992, R, 101 min. Directed by Allison Anders. Starring Brooke Adams, Ione Skye, Fairuza Balk, Robert Knepper, David Lansbury, Jacob Vargas, James Brolin, Chris Mulkey, Donovan Leitch.
REVIEWED By Steve Davis, Fri., Nov. 27, 1992
For the three women in Gas Food Lodging relationships with men have been much like an overnight stop on a lonely stretch of highway, except it's the men who leave the next morning. It's a fit metaphor for the characters in Anders' directorial debut -- a divorced mother and her two teenaged daughters, long ago abandoned by a wandering husband and father -- but one that doesn't really connect in the way it should. Set in the nondescript town of Laramie, New Mexico, this movie has a fleeting resemblance to The Last Picture Show in its depiction of the no-way-out monotony of small-town life. Unlike that 1971 film, however, there's nothing remotely sentimental or romanticized here -- it's as if everything dead-ends in this spot, except for the desert, a mysterious place in which hope finds bloom and color in an otherwise barren landscape. For young Shade, the film's narrator, the prospect of a better life is embodied by a character in the Mexican films she faithfully attends at matinee showings. This inspiration is Elvia Rivero, a not particularly talented B-movie actress whose onscreen life seems to hold the solutions to Shade's crumbling family's problems, the most important being finding a new husband for her mother. It's too bad that Gas Food Lodging is as disconnected as it is because there's a real current of feeling here, especially in Balk's sympathetic performance and the film's unflinching depiction of a single woman trying to raise a family on her own. Rather than make a lasting impression, it makes only a passing one, as impermanent as the momentary view of a dying town on the highway.
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Marjorie Baumgarten, Oct. 29, 1999
Marjorie Baumgarten, Oct. 4, 1996
Jan. 19, 2024
Gas Food Lodging, Allison Anders, Brooke Adams, Ione Skye, Fairuza Balk, Robert Knepper, David Lansbury, Jacob Vargas, James Brolin, Chris Mulkey, Donovan Leitch