Tom DiCillo's

Box of Moonlight

Referred to by writer/director Tom DiCillo as "a modern fable without a moral", "Box Of Moonlight" features John Turturro as Al Fountain, an electrical engineer supervising a construction job away from his Chicago home. Al is a creature of routine, phoning his wife and son at exactly nine o'clock every night, and a painstakingly disciplined worker. Qualities which fail to endear him to his wise-cracking, poker-playing charges who sit together in the hotel dining room while Al eats alone. In exchanges with both his colleagues and his family he comes across as being uptight, humourless and incapable of indulging in even the merest of small talk. What a catch, eh?

Out of the blue, the work contract is cancelled. Instead of returning to the family fold in time for Thanksgiving celebrations Al hires a car, in search of the nearby Splatchee Lake, a place he visited as a child. Following a brief encounter with a bible-bashing pair of sexagenarians at the now-decaying lake Al meets up with a stranded motorist named Bucky, which is pretty much where the film kicks off (albeit forty-odd minutes into proceedings).

Bucky (played with haphazard zeal by Sam Rockwell) is an early twenties loner clad in Davy Crockett hat and a ludicrous suede jumpsuit. He lives in half a trailer (literally), festooned with fairy lights and thrift shop tack and looks like a refugee from a Beck video. He makes a living from selling stolen garden gnomes, has an illegal telephone line and can't believe that American wrestling is fixed.

Hence we are thrust into familiar "odd couple" territory, with Al initially disapproving of Bucky's erratic approach to life. Inevitably as they spend more time together (due to Al losing the keys to his hired car) Al's resentment recedes and the pair indulge in high jinks such as skinny-dipping and tomato fights, culminating in a symbolic bout of petty vandalism at the factory that Al had been working at. Indeed such is Al's newly-gained vigour he extends his stay by pretending that his replacement car-keys aren't available. When he can no longer prolong his adventures (having spent Thanksgiving night with Bucky, "partying" with two local girls in the religious sense), Al returns to Chicago a seemingly more relaxed individual.

Despite excellent performances from Turturro and Rockwell, "Box Of Moonlight" has a limited impact. The buddy-buddy antics, whilst at times very funny, seem a little unnatural and forced. The tomato fight for example is the kind of hackneyed "return to innocence" symbolism that we expect of "Home And Away". Elsewhere we see raps on phone sex and smalltown religious mania which positively scream out the words "easy" and "target". DiCillo's previous two films ("Johnny Suede" and "Living In Oblivion") were bright, inventive and gloriously eccentric, yet by comparison, "Moonlight" lapses into cinematic cliche with distressing regularity.

One might even suggest a degree of artistic compromise. "Box Of Moonlight" smacks of big budget pragmatism, diluting the dose to make it more widely palatable. Or perhaps I've been watching too much of "The Player". Whatever. If you haven't seen DiCillo's first two films I strongly advise that you do. Then wait for the fourth.

Reviewed by Anthony J.Brown.

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