Kalifornia
Road Thriller | 117 Minutes | 1993 | United States
(2.5/4)
Director: Dominic Sena | Producers: Steve Golin, Aristides McGarry, Sigurjón Sighvatsson | Screenplay: Tim Metcalfe | Story: Stephen Levy, Tim Metcalfe | Starring: Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis, David Duchovny, Michelle Forbes | Music: Carter Burwell | Cinematographer: Bojan Bazellli | Editor: Martin Hunter
Brian (David Duchovny) and Carrie (Michelle Forbes) are a couple of struggling professionals with bohemian aspirations. On the back of a successful magazine article, Brian has signed a publishing contract for a book on the topic of serial killers, while Carrie photographs nudes with an eroticism which makes them outré. She is eager for acknowledgement, while he is suffering from writer’s block: he admits that everything he knows about serial killers is contained within the neat confines of the university library.
They plan to drive from their home of Louisville, Kentucky to the golden state of California, stopping off at renowned murder spots along the way. Brian hopes to gain material for his book, which Carrie will graphically illustrate. To top up their gas-guzzling Lincoln Continental, their notice for a ride share is answered by a curious couple, the childlike Adele Corners (Juliette Lewis) and her ragged minder Early Grayce (Brad Pitt).
Early and Adele have left their trailer in a hurry after Early lost his job and they fell behind on the rent. To Brian and Carrie, Early and Adele look like a couple of Okies, sweaty and sun-weathered and scarcely able to pay their way. The smooth college graduates also strike the natives funny, as they drive up to the bus-stop clad in black leather and shades.
Kalifornia offers a strange admixture of road movie and psychotic thriller, compelling for its confluence of influences and star names. With shades of Straw Dogs and Badlands, against the earthy backdrop of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as Mad Max dystopias flash across the sky, the film captures signature performances from a young Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis, who receive top billing even though David Duchovny narrates the action, framing the often grisly events through Brian’s passive interpretative eyes.
Early is not an intelligent man but he possesses powers of persuasion. The pliant Adele needs no convincing when it comes to the merits of their trip to California, but Early attempts to oblige anyway, suggesting that the heat makes people think faster, that an abundance of fruit hangs just waiting to be plucked, and that state law requires the first month of rent to be free. We soon find out that Early is a murderer, who has just finished burying their landlord, but then their acquaintances in Louisville more than dabbled in weird. Early’s parole officer there had a hook hand and an alcoholic’s sputter. Perhaps in California they will be afforded enough space to live and let be.
In the final third of the film, Kalifornia indulges in a gruesome streak which defines its limits as pulpy entertainment. Any pretence of psychological depth or gloomy grandeur is lost and the picture reveals itself as a twisted procedural. The relationships between characters are crudely drawn, and despite the seductive performances the actors rarely stray from their own spheres. Some of the tonal shifts and narrative gestures border on the absurd.
But if Kalifornia survives as a guilty pleasure, it does so while kicking sand in the face of a willing audience. Portrayed from a male perspective, it delights in the transgressive and titillating nature of the dynamic between the two couples, which gets steamier and cockier before culminating almost inevitably in rape.
That fact serves as the logical endpoint of an unbridled imagination, cultivated from the outset by scenes of lovemaking, Brad Pitt’s moonlit body, and Juliette Lewis’s exposed breast. The film works to ramp up the sexual tension between Early and Carrie, whether through prying or disdainful glances or shared closeups of feet. When Early hears Brian and Carrie having sex through the motel room walls, he cuts Adele’s hair so that she looks like Carrie; when Carrie lingers voyeuristically over the sight of Early and Adele screwing in their car, Early regards it as something akin to an invite.
In a coda to the action, Kalifornia also thrusts a finger in the direction of Brian and Carrie, who have landed on their feet in California amid fresh job opportunities and beach house bliss. The critique to the extent that it exists is a familiar one, about the perils of using somebody else’s reality to wring something abstracted and resembling art. Watching Kalifornia years later, the enduring appeal of some of its star names only adds to the general psychosis.
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