Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust

Directed by Robert Towne

Paramount Classics

3 stars



Ah, how I do love Colin Farrell. Ever since his turn as a manipulated CIA fledgling in “The Recruit,” I, like many other star-struck teenage girls, have swooned over the overtly sexual, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking playboy. I didn’t think it got any “badder” than Ireland’s favorite bad boy had already shown us. However, after witnessing Farrell’s latest project, writer/director Robert Towne’s “Ask the Dust,” I left the theater having lost just about all my innocence.

Towne’s film, based on the 1930s Los Angeles novel by John Fante, substitutes the tastefully provocative love scenes of the novel for no-holds-barred romanticized pornography. The sex scenes are so raw and uncomfortable to sit through that they unfairly detract from the complex emotions of the characters and the ultimately heartbreaking storyline.

“Ask the Dust,” follows the trials of Arturo Bandini (Farrell), a struggling Italian-American author who calls himself “a lover, equally fond of man and beast alike.” Don’t ask me what that means. Bandini meets a beautiful Mexican waitress, Camilla, played by Salma Hayek. The two fall madly in love, of course, but their relationships is hindered by fear from publicly expressing their interracial romance.

Bandini constantly insults Camilla with racist retorts. But we soon realize that his insults are actually a reflection of his own anxieties of personal shortcoming. As an Italian-American, he desperately wishes to assimilate into American culture—his ultimate dream would be to have a cliché American last name, a brunette on his arm, and a successful writing career with which he could erase his ethnic heritage.

Hayek’s Camilla feels similarly toward her Mexican background. She has changed her last name from Lopez to Lombard and trades in her comfortable guaraches for elegant white heels after she meets Bandini. However, Camilla is willing to endure the societal stigma against immigrants and interracial relationships to be with Bandini.

Despite a few raunchy love scenes, Towne, well known for his stellar screenplays including “Mission Impossible,” “The Firm,” and “Tequila Sunrise,” manages to send a poignant message about the struggle between personal identity, love, and societal acceptance. The romantic tug-of-war he creates between Bandini and Camilla is artfully executed—not through blunt, explicit lines, but through the carefully directed actions of his characters.

The film’s settings seem almost drawn onto the screen, taken directly out of a picture book. Bandini’s apartment, in particular—with only a barren palm tree visible through the window and a small desk and dirty bed—looks as though it was furnished for a live audience watching the opening scene of a play.

Even with Towne’s substantial creativity, “Ask the Dust” would have crashed and burned without the solid performances of Hayek and Farrell. The fairly simple plot needs the acting heavyweights to add depth of emotion to the tale. Hayek is at her best, depicting a woman strongly connected with her native culture in a society that condemns it.

She creates an innocent, yet sexually attuned character who delivers lines that, when said by anyone else, may have seemed corny or mechanical. Often, Camilla asks Bandini, “Why are you so mean?” This crudely simple line delivered in Hayek’s painfully desperate tone breaks the heart and comes off as more significant than the sum of its parts.

Farrell, on the other hand, seems like he’s still trying for that Oscar nomination. Following performances in epics such as “Alexander,” he once again plays a character much more grandiloquent than the actor is in real life. Although a solid performance overall, Farrell sways from overacting, as though he were on stage, to settling comfortably into Bandini’s skin on screen. At least he didn’t have to pull off an English accent, which we all know didn’t work out too well in “The New World.”

Bottom Line: “Ask the Dust” touches on issues of assimilation and intercultural relations still relevant in America today—and does it well. However, don’t take your grandma to this one…unless, of course, you enjoy watching soft-core porn with family members.

—Staff writer Erin A. May can be reached at emay@fas.harvard.edu.