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Buffalo ’66 (1998)
“These photos are us, in love, spanning time,” repeats miserable ex-con Billy (Vincent Gallo) like a mantra. He’s wedged himself into a bowling alley photo booth with a young woman he’s more or less kidnapped, Layla (Christina Ricci), trying to capture a happy-couple snapshot for his parents.
Fresh out of jail and back on his hometown streets in 1998, Billy might as well be experiencing Buffalo in ’66, the year of his birth…presumably when the trouble began. Everything and everyone he encounters betrays a childhood wound. Most notably, his parents—played by Anjelica Houston and Ben Gazzara—appear suspended in time with their absent affection, rabid football fandom and broken dreams.
Then there are the metatextual layers of Buffalo ’66. Ironically, it’s a document of better times, from before Gallo slipped deeper into self-aggrandizing hustler caricature and right-wing diatribes (Ricci, for her part, said working on the film was a terrible experience).
Buffalo ’66 is all about the sway of delusions and dreams, and it harks back to a moment when independent filmmakers could marshal incredible resources (the cast also includes Mickey Rourke and Rosanna Arquette) to shoot a debut feature on reversal film stock and render an aesthetically ambitious and geographically specific story. Hollywood, Nov. 10-11.
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