HEAVY (73)

Directed by: James Mangold

Starring: Pruitt Taylor Vince, Liv Tyler, Shelley Winters, Deborah Harry

The Pitch: An obese, pathologically shy short-order cook is smitten with the new waitress at the diner owned by his domineering mother.

Theo Sez: Early on in this quietly riveting drama there's a moment, after hours in the diner, when our shy hero is playing "Spit" at a corner table with the pretty new waitress as his mother stands in the doorway sipping at a glass of whisky, dreamily oblivious to the barmaid and her friend gossiping about her, or the black-and-white TV flickering silently in its corner, or the bluesy country song playing low in the background - and the whole moment is just perfect, painstakingly composed as a thumbnail sketch of a very specific forgotten-America ambience. Unfortunately the rest of the film is that same moment repeated over and over again, little haikus of atmosphere without much forward motion. What saves it is, firstly, that it's entirely honest - right from the title - about the kind of film it means to be, and has the courage of its convictions right to the end ; and, secondly, that it gets inside the skin of its borderline-creepy protagonist so relentlessly. It's less flashy than CLEAN, SHAVEN (with which it might make a good, adjectives-only double bill), but its hero is equally pathological in his alienation - we pity him, yet can never quite believe that he's totally harmless (though he never does anything suspicious - it's all in the film's eerie stillness, and the repressed energy in Vince's delicate performance). The ending, his first awkward attempts to fit in, isn't touching in a sentimental way - more like the scene where Frankenstein's monster makes friends with the little girl ; but it is touching.