Depression-period romance, written and directed by Robert Towne, in a largely dark, nocturnal, unsunny Southern California, a star-crossed affair between a gringo and a Chicana, or more disparagingly a "dago" and a "spic," an impoverished young novelist taken under the wing, at long distance, of H.L. Mencken (whose voice in correspondence is provided by film critic and historian Richard Schickel) and a consumptive diner waitress from south of the border, two marginals with a tenuous sense of belonging. (The source material is a 1939 autobiographical novel by John Fante.) Because it is no sort of thriller, it avoids the plotting snarls and snags of Towne's screenplays for things like Chinatown, The Two Jakes, and the two Mission: Impossible's, but it does not avoid the structural weaknesses of slow, shapeless, and exasperating development. And notwithstanding the compatible blackness of their hair, Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek do not have a great deal of chemistry between them, although the combustible Hayek all by herself has enough chemistry for them both. With Idina Menzel, Jeremy Crutchley, Donald Sutherland, Eileen Atkins. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd
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