So you're a loser? Have a drink.

Trees Lounge

Steve Buscemi is mad, and he's not going to take it anymore. As the "funny-looking" Carl in the Coen Brothers' Fargo or the frenzied Mr. Pink in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Buscemi has made a career out of playing an ingratiating but dopey outsider.

It would only seem logical that in Trees Lounge, the first movie where Buscemi has complete control--he wrote, directed, and starred in--he would buck the trend and reverse the typecast. But, again, in the role of down-on-his-luck Tommy, Buscemi plays the same somewhat lovable loser, with even more complexity and opaqueness than usual. While questionable for the future diversity of his career, Buscemi's choice is tactically intelligent. Both his vaguely vampiric looks and genuine naiveté make him hard to dislike, even though most of his screen personas are swathed in immorality.

Trees Lounge takes place in and around the eponymous bar; Tommy lives above it and seems to spend most of his time among the regulars. Buscemi manages to create a likably pathetic ensemble of barflies from the dregs of suburbia. The stand-outs are Mike (Mark Boone, Jr.), a boor with marital problems, and Bill (Bronson Dudley), a grumpy, wrinkled Korean War veteran determined to drink himself into oblivion.

Most of the film involves Tommy's bleak life and attempts to survive. He was fired by his boss, Rob (Anthony LaPaglia), after stealing $1,500 and heading to Atlantic City, although this, like so much of the action, is left off-screen. Moving also lost him his girlfriend of eight years, Theresa (Elizabeth Bruco), who is now shacking up with Rob. Nothing in Tommy's life seems to work, including his car. Even Mike has to say, "Whatta loser!"

The main action--or, more appropriately, inaction--of the film is interrupted when Tommy's Uncle Al has a heart attack while driving his ice cream truck. This not only reunites Tommy with his dysfunctional family for a "wacky" funeral scene, but gives him a job (as replacement Good Humor Man) and an illicit relationship with his 17-year-old niece, Debbie (Chloe Sevgy). Immorality spirals into tragedy, and the movie ends with Tommy in the same place as he began: warming a bar stool, with no hope for the future.

To the film's credit, it manages to make Tommy's dreary existence endearing, thanks in part to Buscemi's unintentional charisma. The greatest compliment that can be given to the large cast is that it's impossible to tell that they are acting. Each actor slips into his or her role with grace and ease, and Buscemi has managed to insert a few star cameos with equal fluidity. Samuel L. Jackson as Wendell, a mover working for Mike, is so low-key that it's tough to notice his walk-on role; Mimi Rogers, playing Debbie's mother Patty, is similarly understated.

But the film loses its focus when Buscemi tries to do too much. Random elements and subplots detract from the central narrative. Trees Lounge tries to assert its indie pedigree with several examples of drug use, grainy cinematography, and the requisite urination scene. Following in the footsteps of other "slice-of-life" art films, Buscemi attempts absurdist humor, with mixed results. The funeral scene, with its neurotic, over-the-top relatives, seems to come from another movie. A running gag involving a little boy who tries to pursue the ice cream truck is equally puerile. These attempts at humor seem unnatural and disrupt the tone; comedy naturally results from the deranged actions and mixed-up logic of the characters. Tommy's attempts to rationalize his actions are especially ridiculous: "Everybody's fucked up...and nobody wants you to know they are." When the movie's action isn't forced, it compels the viewer to watch with the same spirited disinterest the characters use to survey their lives.

The Trees Lounge is a safe haven where its patrons can avoid responsibility, morality, and introspection. But within the bar's confines, there is no opportunity for progress or change. When Tommy sits next to the aged Bill, it's like looking at a picture of the same man in forty years, still doomed to a life of trapped mediocrity.

The events in Trees Lounge are silhouettes, not substance, mimicking the uncertainty of Tommy's life. Even the sex is off-screen, and the audience is left unsure of what really happened. In one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the movie, Tommy visits Theresa in the hospital after she has given birth, again off-screen, to what might be his son. He actively tries to escape the limbo that he has created, asserting that he could reform "if I had a kid." Theresa rejects him, though, and again he's stuck in his established role--a failure for Tommy the character, if not for Buscemi the actor.