Kinship and conflict in a tough world

Press, 15 July 1985, Page 7

Kinship and conflict in a tough world

hans petrovic

VILLAGE DREAMS Directed by Stuart Rosenberg Screenplay by Vincent Patrick In “Village Dreams” (Academy), living on the fringe of social respectability can be tough — especially if you have a friend like Paulie.

Charlie (Mickey Rourke) is a self-confident young man, with a good job as a maitre d’ and a lovely girlfriend, Diane (Daryl Hannah). He has dreams of moving out of the streets of New York’s Little Italy, and possibly starting his own restaurant.

Paulie (Eric Roberts) also has dreams for self-im-provement, but any get-rich-quick scheme will do — it is not how you get the cash, but how you spend it that is important. It is through Paulie’s dishonesty that Charlie is fired from the restaurant, but it is still beyond Paulie’s comprehension to realise he has done anything wrong: “It would have been wrong if I’d thought I’d get caught stealing that money. But I didn’t think I’d get caught. Therefore, I didn’t do anything wrong.” Against his better instincts, Charlie is soon involved with Paulie in a crackpot safe-breaking job

that turns sour, results in the death of one man, and has both the Mafia and the Police on our heroes’ tails.

Diane is pregnant but can no longer live with Charlie if he continues his disastrous friendship with Paulie. Before leaving she asks, “Why are you always one inch away from being a good person?” “You are all caught up in your tribal loyalty — in your neighbourhood,” Diane adds, and thereby puts her finger on what this film is all about. Charlie and Paulie are close friends, but also third cousins in the tightly-knit Italian community, where the only thing thicker than blood is Paulie’s head. The influence of the underworld permeates the scene, and

one code of honour is inviolable — you cannot turn your back or squeal on your own kind.

“Village Dreams” explores this close kinship and comradeship through its ups and downs with both warmth and humour, but never forgets the underlying drama of survival in a tough urban world.

Paulie needs the older Charlie as someone to look up to and model himself on in between crazy schemes; Charlie is the more staid, passive character who needs Paulie, the bubbling extrovert, to add some zest to his own life.

Possibly what most makes this film so enjoyable is this combination of opposites, with Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts playing off each other with flair and understanding.

Rourke, who was last seen in “Diner,” is the dapper man about town, who gets dressed in his expensive, European-cut suits to the accompaniment of Frank Sinatra’s swinging “Summer Wind.” He is hard to faze yet insecure underneath it all.

Roberts, with his rough good looks, rants, raves and

bounces through this film with an incredible performance that steals every scene in which he appears. To my knowledge, his only other major screen appearance was in “Star 80” (still to be seen here), in which he played a totally different role.

If anyone should have been nominated for last year’s best-actor Oscar, it was Roberts. As it happens, a nomination for best supporting actress went to Geraldine Page, who makes two memorable but very brief appearances as a dowdy, bereaved .mother. Other fine character performances are given by the under-rated Burt Young, as the thoroughly nasty Bedbug Eddie; and Kenneth McMillan, as an aging safecracker.

Vincent Patrick adapted the screenplay from his own novel, “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” and has managed to retain its character and nuance.

If anything, this is one of the film’s major obstacles, for some of the New York accents are even thicker than Paulie’s head, and the intricately woven plot also requires strict attention by the audience.