Boulevard film review ★★★★★

Dito Montiel's Boulevard is not for everyone. Robin Williams allows the rest of the cast to outshine him, his Nolan watching the world with a distant melancholy that is as understated as his original TV Mork was completely over-the-top. It is of course poignant to see the actor playing out the last drama in a long, exuberant career, his roles often so much larger than life, with such restraint and genuine finesse, his quiet passion suggesting the beginnings of mastery.

There is something Fargo-esque in the mood of the opening scenes. Nolan has worked twenty five years in a suburban bank, existing within the interminable construct of the American dream, where other peoples' systems slowly drive out the will to really live. At home we see married life equally bereft of spirit. Yet Nolan and his wife Joy, played finely by Kathy Baker, are both somehow able to infuse some soul into something that died long ago.

It is only when fate throws a troubled young Leo (Roberto Aguire - a sort of pretty Steve Buscemi) into his car, turning tricks, that the fragile unreality of his world starts to fall apart and reality, with all its uncomfortable strangeness, starts to shine in through the widening cracks.

Nolan loves his wife but falls in love with someone else, and a back story is slowly revealed in an economic script by Douglas Soesbe. It’s unlikely in plot at points, particularly when the pimp turns up, but this can be forgiven.

American cinema is only just understanding ‘slow,’ and is now beginning to assimilate certain European characteristics. Here, the director makes careful use of cold and warm colour grading, coupled by a score at once tight and loose that certainly has its transcendent moments, particularly during William’s confessional at the bedside of his dying father.

Boulevard can, unfortunately, prove a little lukewarm at times, but somehow it still manages to play with fire.