Tales of Ordinary Madness

The poet Charles Serking sobers up enough to get on a bus back to Los Angeles and gives himself over to an unbroken circuit of drink and sex. Along the way he meets Cass, the hardest and most fragile figure in the film. Marco Ferreri works from Charles Bukowski's short stories, and Serking is openly built on Bukowski himself. Ferreri shoots America as an Italian would: Los Angeles here is not a myth but an empty, hot place. Ben Gazzara leads, with Ornella Muti as Cass. The film took four national awards in Italy and the grand prize at the San Sebastián Film Festival. Bukowski disliked the result, thought Gazzara miscast, and complained that the character came out too sane. Who it's for: Viewers drawn to how European cinema of the 1970s and 1980s looked at America, to misfit protagonists, and to Ferreri's provocations. Who it's not for: The treatment of sex and of the female characters is uncomfortable from here, and Bukowski readers may not find the adaptation faithful.