In the Soup

Adolpho lives in New York and has written a five hundred page screenplay. Nobody reads it. He cannot pay his rent, he is in love with his neighbour, and the script is all he owns. He places an advertisement: his screenplay is for sale. A call comes. Joe meets him; he is old, talkative, generous and certainly involved in mob business. He has not read the script but wants to finance it. Adolpho agrees. Then he sees how Joe raises money: theft, threats and a funeral. The film is never made but the two men become friends. Alexandre Rockwell directs and co-wrote the screenplay. Steve Buscemi plays Adolpho and Seymour Cassel plays Joe; Jennifer Beals is in the cast. It is an American production and the film is in black and white. It won the grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Seymour Cassel was cited at the independent awards for the part and the character became one of his best known. Jim Jarmusch appears in a small role. The matter it treats is the making of an independent film itself; the film takes its own conditions of production as its subject. Its strongest side is the relationship between the two actors and most of the scenes feel close to improvisation. The black and white is used as a choice rather than a constraint of budget. Its limit is structure; the plot is loose and some sections come apart. Who it is for: viewers who like American independent cinema of the nineties and Steve Buscemi. Who it is not for: the story is thin, the pace uneven, and the ending is left open.