IFFB: Lonesome Jim Reviewed

Casey Affleck plays Jim, a depressed 27 year old who returns home because he's run out of money and has nowhere else to go. He doesn't even like his family - this was a last resort.

Mom and Dad own and run a factory where his brother Tim also works. Tim is a divorced 32 year old that wanted nothing more than to work for the CIA but now works for minimum wage and coaches a little girls basketball league that has never gotten a basket in never mind a won game. He tells his team, "Don't shoot the ball unless your positive it'll go in." The girls pass the ball around afraid to take the shot.

Jim's mom is a dreamer who is always smiling. She talks about herself in third person. "You know Mom never wanted to..." Jim's dad is grumpy and negative. When Jim arrives home and starts crying on the floor in the kitchen, his dad shouts "What's wrong with him?!"
To say Jim's a horrible person may be an understatement. He steals money from his mom, and has no interest in helping out his family. When he asks to borrow the car, his mom says yes. She asks if he could drop her off somewhere. He tells her that he isn't going that way.

Jim tells his brother that he would have killed himself long ago if he were Tim. "I'm a fuckup but you're a tragedy."

Jim meets Liv Tyler's character Monica in a bar. When he finds out Monica is a nurse he unsmoothly offers "Oh, I once lived across the street from a hospital in Manhattan." The uncomfortable moments in this scene are perfect. He tells her that he's a writer and she tells him she writes for herself. Jim says he likes her audience.

Jim is the type of person who thinks hospitals are cold and sanitized while Monica thinks a hospital bed is more comfortable than her bed at home. So they have sex in a hospital bed, which lasts a whopping 20 seconds.

Tim gets into a car "accident" with a tree and is in a coma. His mom tells Jim this isn't his first "accident." Jim is forced to work at the factory, coach the basketball team, and help watch Tim's two little girls.

And of course Monica works at the hospital and wonders why Jim never called. She gives him a second chance but brings her son on the date. When he drops them off at home and says goodbye the kid blurts out, "You can kiss her if you want."

At the factory we meet his uncle "Evil" who sells drugs on the job. Evil says he doesn't have a girlfriend because whores are cheaper. He also has a theory that you can train your penis by peeing in spurts. He brags to Jim that he can now sometimes have sex for almost a full ten minutes.

When his mother gets arrested by the DEA for distributing drugs through the companies fedex account, Uncle Evil threatens Jim.

In his room, Jim has a wall of pictures featuring famous writers who have killed themselves. When Monica "gives Hemmingway a smile" (a cut out smile from an ad in a magazine), Jim tells her that the other way is more truer to life. Monica responds "but the other way is depressing." Jim says exactly.

Lonesome Jim is a movie made by little moments like this. I understand I've told you a lot about plot, but that's only a formality. This is a story about characters. About Jim, a depressed twenty something who came home to have a mental breakdown, but his brother beat him to it.

It may sound like a drama, but trust me, it's a comedy. The laughter plays off the dramatic situations and quirky real-life characters. The dialogue borders on the line between clever and genius. And Buscemi's direction could only be described as simple, but works well to compliment this simple story.

Casey Affleck delivers such a great performance; you can't imagine anyone but him as Jim. Liv Tyler hasn't done much better but that's not to say her performance is good.

The movie, like all of Indigent's releases, is mostly shot handheld with mini DV cameras. People will notice this quickly. It doesn't look like film. But this is a movie that proves that story, character, and performance transcends visuals. Ten minutes into the movie and I'm betting no one even thought about or noticed the difference. They were sucked in to the character and story, and it no longer mattered.

Buscemi the director may in fact be better than Buscemi the actor. The performances he got could not have been an accident. Buscemi and Strouse seem to perfectly compliment each other. I'd love to see them collaborate again.

Strouse is definitely a writer to watch. Let's hope this wasn't the only story he has to tell. It's loosely based off his real life and family, so that scares me. I hope to see more work of this quality from him.

Afterthought: Why is this film getting a 3.8 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database? Okay, in all fairness they don't even have 100 votes yet. Rotten Tomatoes shows a different story. A film is fresh if it's 60% or higher and Lonesome Jim is currently batting 100.