Factotum

Henry Chinaski moves from job to job: a pickle factory, a bicycle warehouse, cleaning a hotel, delivering papers. He lasts less than a week at any of them. At night he drinks, bets and writes. He sends what he writes to magazines and most of it comes back. Bent Hamer directed and wrote with Jim Stark, from Charles Bukowski's novel. Matt Dillon plays Chinaski, Lili Taylor his girlfriend Jan. Hamer is Norwegian and shot the film in Minneapolis; the result is a colder, emptier image than Bukowski's Los Angeles. Dillon does not reduce the role to caricature; the man drinks but is not played as constantly drunk, rather as calm and stubborn. The idea is the irreconcilability of work and writing: Chinaski does not refuse to work, he refuses to let work kill the writing. The film builds no plot; episodes follow one another and nothing develops. Who it is for: readers of Bukowski and viewers who like calm, character-driven films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a story; the film deliberately arrives nowhere.