The heart of the matter in 'Fast Food, Fast Women'
By Bruce Emond
JAKARTA (JP): Bella, the protagonist of Fast Food, Fast Women, is a mind-boggling mass of contradictions, achingly needy in her disjointed relationships with men even as she serves up helpings of moral sustenance in her job as a waitress at a New York City diner.
As played by Anna Thomson, she is a doting mother and gentle taskmaster to her regulars, from the stammering prostitute ("It only happens when I'm nervous") to the trio of elderly male curmudgeons she puts on the dietary straight and narrow by changing their breakfast orders.
At the end of the day, after berating the listless owner of the diner and making her umpteenth threat to quit, she heads home to her small walk-up and counts the days to her impending 35th birthday. The only interruptions in her lonely existence are from the mice she also takes under her wing, thankfully brief phone interrogations from her shrewish, demeaning mother and occasional visits from her Broadway producer lover.
The latter are also fleeting, with the aging and married George clearly having only one thing on his mind -- his pants are already around his knees as he barrels into her apartment and plops himself in bed.
After he has rolled off the shell-shocked Bella and prepares to make a hasty departure, he tosses her a morsel to keep her hanging on, telling her he will send her tickets to his new show.
"The premiere?" she asks excitedly.
"The dress rehearsal," he answers as he flits out the door.
Funny and stinging
It's one of the poignant moments, at once funny and stinging, which are found throughout Amos Kolek's Fast Food, Fast Women, which is being shown on Tuesday in the Cannes film section of the Jakarta International Film Festival (10 p.m., Jakarta Theater). At its core, past the raging neurosis of the lead and the downtrodden assortment of characters who are part of her life, it is a simple and beguiling film about our quest for love and how, so often, our egos get in the way.
As the doomsday of her birthday looms, Bella has a blind date with Bruno (Jamie Harris), a lanky English taxi driver who has just been saddled with his two young children from a marriage which ended five years earlier.
Bella arrives for the date with guns blazing, deciding to camouflage her need to be loved and settle down by asserting that she detests children. Bruno launches his defensive salvo by announcing that he actually prefers 20-year-old Swedish girls "who are always up for it". Their standoff at the dinner table, with each shielding their egos, eventually ends when they tumble into bed.
In the morning, Bella's defenses from the night before have been broken down. She shyly covers her naked body with bedsheets, "because I don't like it". When Bruno offers to take the mice outside, Bella's vulnerability is painfully clear. "Be gentle -- don't make them feel unwanted," she implores.
Bella and Bruno are not the only ones experiencing trouble with matters of the heart. One of the old men from the diner answers a lonely hearts classified, and meets up with a 60- something widow (Louise Lasser) who lies about being well-to-do.
Another of the men becomes infatuated with a young woman who works in a peep show. He wants nothing more than to take her for a cup of coffee, but she says no. As he sadly heads for the cubicle door, the woman pulls back the partition and tells him a cup of tea after work would do fine.
Concept of fantasy
Fast Food, Fast Women is full of engaging characterizations of people stripping away their masks to give in to love. It also works over the concept of fantasy, such as the young boy who spies on Bella, and the old man whose nightly ritual is to watch a woman undressing in the apartment across the street. They place their fantasy figures on pedestals but they spend their night with the true loves of their lives.
The casting and performances are wonderful, beginning with Thomson. She dithers in her speech, but becomes shrill when pushed into a corner, the telling symptom of the insecure. And she looks the part; she has wan blonde hair and a thin figure, but she also is big-breasted, a child-woman in body and mind. Harris, no he-man in the physique competition, brings a winning honesty to his role. Even the small roles are excellently realized (look closer at shifty George -- he is the actor who played the benefactor Mr. Larabee in Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? way back in 1972).
The revelation is Lasser, who some may remember from the U.S. TV cult classic Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Gone are her pigtails and gormless appearance from that show; here is a blonde matron with romance on her mind. When her new male friend gently brushes off her advances, she slumps dejectedly in Bruno's cab on the way home. He tells her he remembers her from a past ride because "you have an unforgettable face" -- and the way her eyes light up is in itself something to remember.