'One Night Stand' No 'Vegas'

With the Oscar award winning Leaving Las Vegas, director Mike Figgis made a film that was as hopelessly romantic as it was depressing. With no trappings of saccharine Hollywood sentimentality, Figgis' grim valentine was one of the best films of 1995 because it achieved a refreshing balance between pulp tragedy and true-love lyricism. Although his follow-up One Night Stand has much in common thematically with Leaving Las Vegas, and once again showcases Figgis' stylish direction, it lacks the earlier film's complexity and emotional heft (not to mention a powerhouse performance from a great actor like Nicolas Cage).

One Night Stand charts the effects of a casual infidelity on the life and marriage of a commercial director, admirably portrayed by Wesley Snipes. Although it lapses towards the end, it is better than most Hollywood fare in dealing with its provocative subject matter. The film attempts to address the issues of adultery and loss intelligently, and doesn't make the mistake of sensationalizing the interracial relationships (Snipes cheats on his Asian-American wife with a white woman) at its center. However it is far from equal to Vegas, or Figgis' earlier films Internal Affairs and the lesser-known noir confection Stormy Monday.

Snipes stars as Max Carlyle, a commercial director living in Los Angeles with his over-sexed wife Mimi (Ming-Na Wen) and two children. During a business trip to New York, he visits his best friend Charlie (Robert Downey Jr.), a performance artist stricken with AIDS, gets separated from his production team and somehow ends up stranded in the city with Karen (Nastassja Kinski), a beautiful rocket scientist (you heard me). After going to a Beethoven concert, flirting shamelessly at a jazz club and escaping a nearly fatal mugging, Karen and Max, surprise, surprise, end up in bed together. Snipes returns home emotionally shaken and begins to question the stability of his marriage and the value of his work. A year passes, and Snipes returns to New York--this time with his wife--to visit Charlie on his deathbed. There, Max meets Charlie's brother (an alternately geeky and creepy Kyle Maclachlan) who just happens to be married to Karen (surprise number two).

It is at this point that One Night Stand begins to fall flat. The relationship between Max and Karen never really gets off the ground. No sufficient reason is given as to why Max would want to jeopardize his marriage, and his attraction to Karen never seems powerful enough to inspire a convincing reevaluation of his life.

Kinski barely registers. In her early scenes with Snipes she is vulnerably cute, after which she just stands around looking hopelessly vacant. She is upstaged by Wen (who played June in The Joy Luck Club). Snipes and Wen have great chemistry, taking an argument about a dress and twisting it beautifully into a full-out tete-a-tete. Snipes' nuanced performance--for which he received the Best Actor Award at this year's Venice Film Festival--makes you wish that he would give up playing generic action heroes and return to more serious acting like that of his earlier work with Spike Lee. Charismatic and sincere, he is particularly effective in scenes with Downey (who gives real depth and personality to a character who could have easily come across as a mere caricature).

Ultimately the third and most important act of One Night Stand comes off as completely implausible--despite Snipes's efforts to anchor the sketchy romance--because of the weak screenplay. In the opening sequence Figgis has Snipes directly addressing the camera as he walks through the streets of Manhattan on his way to see Charlie. This narrative device pops up sporadically in an effort to connect the sloppy narrative strands. The script was originally written by Joe Esterzhas (purveyor of such cinematic fool's gold as Basic Instinct and the infamous Showgirls), and it shows in some places (an especially acrobatic sex scene, for instance).

Comedic elements are also introduced in the third act in a vain attempt to re-charge the faltering narrative. A scene set in a sushi bar is oddly reminiscent of a Woody Allen film. However Figgis only hints at the ironic comedy and existential angst found in the best of Allen's work.

What saves the sketchy script just enough to make the particularly weak parts bearable is Figgis' direction. As in Leaving Las Vegas, there is often no separation between his bluesy score and his direction. Like the best of jazz, Figgis articulates as much passion in the silences (scenes punctuated by lulls and darkness) as in the straightforward action. A party scene late in the film, with the camera roaming through a drunk crowd under soft amber light, and an earlier incident in which Snipes wanders through a wild Manhattan parade, take on the rhythm and expressionistic flair that made Vegas so good. Too bad One Night Stand didn't get more in the way of inspiration from the previous film.