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WHAT SHE DID FOR LOVE Leaving Las Vegas is a fashionable ode to self-destruction. Directed and written by Mike Figgis, it’s a doomy melody of warped nihilism: running throughout are languorous renditions of “Angel Eyes,” “It’s a Lonesome Old Town” and “My One and Only” by Sting, “Lonely Teardrops” by Michael McDonald, and “Come Rain or Come Shine” from Don Henley. It’s as if Nicolas Cage’s Ben, a drunk out to literally drown himself in booze, is being coaxed along by a melancholic Dr. Kevorkian. In fact, he is: Elisabeth Shue as Sera, a prostie who comes to love him, shows her love by allowing Cage his freedom to kill himself; she even buys him a silver flask. True—if a boozer is bent on ruin there’s not much any one can do to stop him, but it’s also true there’ll be few around to dissuade him because drunks at this stage of their illness have only the bottle as companion. (The fate of Senator George McGovern’s daughter.) But it’s a stretch if not false for a non-drunk to offer Shue’s level of complicity. Recovering alcoholics will likely howl too: an intervention after several days in the dry tank would be a truer proof of love. If the freedom to kill one’s self is vogue now, it doesn’t mean the choice is worthy of salute. Cage has scenes coming as close to actual experience as any actor playing a drunk: when he’s guzzling down a pint at a strip joint, or when a baby whore fellates his wedding ring off, or when he breaks down and blacks out at the Vegas blackjack table, he’s scarily superior to the four drunks who inspired him—Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend, Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses, Dudley Moore’s Arthur and Albert Finney in Under the Volcano. In tight colored leather minis squeezing her thighs, Shue resembles Farrah Fawcett, though she doesn’t have the million dollar bleached teeth, at least not yet. She’s got some remarkably gritty lines and confessions, especially one about mouthwash, and Fonda fans might see a bit of Klute, in which Bree speaks to a headshrinker, as does Sera. We’ve become tired of back-from-the-bottle stories—AA has never been a particularly movie-friendly subject—so it may be fitting for its time to let Figgis pour the poison of fatalism, suggesting life’s not worth it, suggesting love means a co-dependent never has to say she’s sorry for helping kill the person she claims to love. I’ll bet Robert Downey Jr. is glad he never met Sera. Text COPYRIGHT © 2007 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved.
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