THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 27, 1996 TAG: 9609300200
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E13 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: 59 lines
A SLICE OF LIFE can be revealing, even moving, but you'd hardly trade it in for lemon meringue.
``Heavy,'' the low-budget independent film directed and written by James Mangold, works quietly, but not effortlessly, at persuading us to share the loneliness of a few everyday people in a dingy upstate New York bar.
Melodrama is avoided at every turn.
Before it's over, our hearts go out to shy, overweight Victor, a poor soul who sees the world through the food slot of his mom's bar. Victor, as played by Pruitt Taylor Vince, is invisible to the rest of the world. People ignore him. He is a seldom-seen character in movies - the lonely guy who never has either a comedic or melodramatic breakout.
Vince has few lines, but he shows us the kind of boy-man who has convinced himself that he is a nobody, an also-ran. He begins each day by cooking a huge breakfast for his loving, but emotionally suffocating, mother (played with her usual earthiness by two-time Oscar winner Shelley Winters). He ends the days by rolling dough for the few pizzas that the out-of-the-way bar manages to sell.
In this ``Beauty and the Beast'' treatment, Callie, a beautiful but confused college dropout, takes a job as a waitress. She is played by this year's most luminous new star, Liv Tyler, in a presence that suggests a good-hearted but also trapped being. Callie, like Victor, is somewhat limited to ordinariness, in spite of her beauty. Callie, like Victor, may become an also-ran.
Only at the movies would someone like Callie pay much attention to someone like Victor but this, after all, is a movie that insists on not resorting to the dramatic turns of other movies.
Victor's lack of communication makes him a bit more creepy than lovable, although we feel guilty about feeling that way. We often wish he'd talk to us, let us know about his problems. Director-writer James Mangold apparently thinks the rudimentary functions of drama would be too gauche, and ordinary, to fit into Victor's world of gritty nondrama.
Deborah Harry is quite good as a sluttish, over-the-hill waitress who is immediately jealous of the attention paid to her younger co-worker.
Tyler is still more a presence than a real actress, but she is already something that is largely missing in films today - a movie star. The camera loves her, and so will audiences for years to come.
The film winds down to a mere murmur of an ending, fading out with no real drama. We've visited. We've been depressed, but we aren't all that sorry to be leaving. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Heavy''
Cast: Liv Tyler, Shelley Winters, Deborah Harry, Pruitt Taylor
Vince
Director and writer: James Mangold
MPAA rating: R (language)
Mal's rating: Two 1/2 stars
Location: Naro in Norfolk by CNB