IN THE SOUP

Rip It Up, Issue 191, 1 June 1993, Page 34

IN THE SOUP

Director: Alexandre Rockwell Director Rockwell has admitted that In the Soup is a slice of autobiography, based on the traumas that he himself experienced when he tried to finance his first film, with, as he put it, a head full of Dostoyevsky and pockets full of change. On screen, the ambitious young would-be director Adolpho Rollo (Steve Muscemi) find himself in the clutches of Joe, an amiable con man, played to the hilt by Seymour Cassel. At the end of the movie, Muscemi may not have yet made his film, but, as we watch those wonderful images of both Cassel and Jennifer Beals dancing, we realize that he has learnt something about life.

In the Soup is a romp, presented scene by scene (each fading away to darkness) as the young man encounters a seriesof zany characters—Steven Randazzo and Francesco Messina'sfast-talking landlords, who sing fortheir rent in two-part a cappella, Will Patton's haemophiliac psychopath and, early on, Jim Jarmusch and Carol Kane in a droll cameo, tempting Muscemo to take part in a rather bizarre television programme. The centrepiece of the film is the friendship that grows between Adolpho and Joe. Joe is a genial scoundrel. He spirits his way into Adolpho's apartment and wakes the young man up by nibbling at his ear. He also sits patiently listening to Adolpho reading his interminable script with such dippy conceits as Nietszche as a tennis player (Adolpho admits early on that he was raised by Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche). Dressed as Father Christmas,

he whirlsthe younger man off fora spot of carconversion and then saunters through a sampling of Latin American dances in an evening of drunken revelry. In the Soup is a film about film-making. There are echoes of those who have gone before, from Vigo to Fellini. Yet, for all the quotesand near-quotes, and all the unbridled zaniness. This is a film with a heart, most touchingly so with Jennifer Beals'marvellous portrayal of Angelica and a moving scene in which an old man mistakes Adolpho for his son, during a house-breaking escapade. A wonderful movie. WILLIAM DART