Kitchen Privileges
When I speak to New Orleans director Mari Kornhauser, she’s recovering from Mardi Gras the night before, along with the rest of the parish. Although she now lives in the Crescent City, she’s spent much of the last decade in Los Angeles, writing a series of spec and commissioned film scripts (among them the 1994 Mickey Rourke vehicle F.T.W., aka The Last Ride, and 1991’s Zandalee) and getting to know her way around the business with an eye toward directing.In Kitchen Privileges, Kornhauser’s feature debut, Marie (Katharina Wressing) is a young woman rendered severely agoraphobic in the wake of a brutal rape, struggling to regain control of her life and re-enter the societal fray. With little in the way of help coming from her impatient boyfriend (Geoffrey Lower) and others close to her, she begins to forge a bond with her new tenant, the mysterious Tom (Peter Sarsgaard of Boys Don’t Cry), whose mysterious comings and goings lead Marie to wonder if he may be the dreaded Freeway serial killer.
A psychological suspense film that at times echoes Polanski’s Repulsion in the way it portrays a fragmented feminine psyche, Kitchen Privileges is thick with hazy unease and disturbing moments, many of which, Kornhauser says, came from her experiences in the Big Easy.
“It’s as though you get into good and evil, and I hate to use that term but you’re always on such a razor’s wire here. Literally, it’s like a high wire act, except with razor wire, right? That’s what you live in here. It’s like a demilitarized zone here in the French Quarter — the stories you get here you just don’t get in Los Angeles, in the entertainment industry, anyway. California is just different than here.”
The film is awash in the kind of eerie, off-kilter dynamics of her adopted hometown, and though it was shot in the suburbs outside of L.A., it resonates with a neo-Southern Gothic sensibility that only adds to the story’s brooding sense of unease.
“Just for practicality,” says Kornhauser, “I couldn’t shoot in Louisiana, and since the entire film takes place in a house, more or less, I could create that feeling of unease artificially. As for the production design palette — I wanted to go from that Degas Impressionist thing to the Expressionist sort of Munch-like thing, which I guess isn’t all that Southern but it’s sort of unsettling, which Louisiana is. I just like how European films look, and usually those films have been shot on Fuji.”
In the end, Kornhauser’s film provides a glimpse into areas of personal responsibility in the face of overwhelming troubles. “There’s too much abdication of moral responsibility in this country,” adds Kornhauser, “and I think that if there’s anything that I’m always exploring in my work it’s when we cross the line and where we err. When we create our ‘sins,’ we need to take responsibility for that.”
Fri, Mar 10, 10pm, State Theater; Sun, Mar 12, 4pm, Dobie 3; Sat, Mar 18, 9:30pm, Paramount.
This article appears in March 10 • 2000.