Go Go Tales (2007)

Sadly Over-hyped

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Good old Abel Ferrara, his films are never the easiest to watch and no easier to review. Always worth watching, however, and this little number had completely passed me by before I picked up an Italian DVD, with an English audio track fortunately. A failing strip/lap dance joint a lost lottery ticket and owners threatening to foreclose. Sounds a little uninspiring but the Ferrara is not interested in some glossy, happy go lucky enterprise and what we get here is a very well shot, edited and filmed impression of more behind the scenes than anything else. Most of the guys are aged, bossy and freeloading as the ship goes down while all the nubile ladies give it their all, because that's what they do. Asia Argento is very impressive, as is the ever dependable William Dafoe in the lead. Roy Dotrice was a nice surprise and even Bob Hoskins is fine. Sylvia Miles, who I haven't seen since Paul Morrissey's Heat, is a little over the top but just about does the job. More than a little echo here of Cassavetes' Killing of a Chinese Bookie, but nothing wrong with that.

Shot in November 2006, Abel Ferrara's Go Go tales isn't the comedy he was selling us, that honour goes to Driller Killer with his artist in turmoil overacting. This film is nowhere near the screwball comedy a Director with 30 years experience under his belt would spit out. Did Ferrara think the punchline joke that ends the film was worth sitting through 1 hr and 40 mins? No. His lacking script or should I say the editing room helped dig this film further into distribution hell, as of 2009 the film has hardly been seen, DVD's cannot be easily sought, no screenings anywhere unless you download the film for free. I for one would buy the DVD, not for the film, but to listen to Ferrara's hilarious commentary which is always good for a laugh! Poor Italian investors, unlucky crew and especially embarrassment for the cast.Many actors are wasted with nothing to do, as I blame the editing which Ferrara loves to shoot everything on set and then try to stitch it all up coherently later, which he did brilliantly with SNAKE EYES (Dangerous game) and partly successfully in NEW ROSE HOTEL and failed miserably in THE BLACKOUT.Hamming it up seems to be another problem with Go go tales. Sylvia Miles maybe an icon from the 60's Warhol set but her acting hasn't IMPROVed either. Asia Argento may be pretty but she is as bad as Sylvia Miles with the improv and she wasn't even born when Warhol put down his Bolex and switched to Polaroid. Credit to Matthew Modine for making a third appearance in a Ferrara film, an actor whose career has drifted off slightly since starring in his first Ferrara film THE BLACKOUT in 1997. Special mention to Willem Dafoe who actually pulled what he had out of the bag to give us that smirk in the final shot of the film.Years of pre-production hell. Distribution legal troubles and an ever changing cast made this film a trouble project for Ferrara. Then again he was the writer and director of this tale and unfortunately not one for recommendation.

If you speak French, you'll find looking for inconsistencies in the subtitles more entertaining than what's going on on screen. For any good film, I take well over a page of notes. For this one, I took less than half a page. 'Nuff said? Perhaps not. How can a film with Willem Dafoe as a strip club owner, and with Bob Hoskins, be boring? Well, this one is. How disappointing. Dafoe does more acting (and we learn more about his character) in the first scene of To Live and Die in L.A. than he does in this entire film. Dafoe as Ray Ruby, owner of the Paradise Club; Hoskins as the Baron (greeter / maître d' / bouncer); and Matthew Modine as Johnnie Ruby, the Salon King are nothing special here. On the other hand, Sylvia Miles as landlady Lilian Murray; and Stefania Rocca as Debby, a dancer who is also a screenwriter, are decent and believable.As to the plot, there isn't much of one—nothing out of the ordinary happens here, nothing unexpected. There's no more conflict, no more actual heartfelt emotion at Ray's Paradise Club than there is at your own neighbourhood bar or pool hall. When a hundred seconds of plot are stretched out to a hundred minutes of film, that is NOT 'a good thing.' Likewise when any five minutes of a film look essentially the same as any other five minutes.The sole exception is Selena Khoo as Leila, a dancer who is also an accomplished pianist. She should've been on screen a half hour more than she was. Oh well, maybe in the sequel. Oh, whom am I kidding? There isn't going to be a sequel. God, I hope not.

I was excited to see this brilliant ensemble cast do their magic in Go Go Tales, but I found myself unexpectedly being served a gourmet hot-dog from actors who are capable of playing much more challenging characters. What makes a gourmet hot-dog anyways? Is it made from the lips and a**holes of kobe beef? Is there fois gras blended in with the questionable parts of top-shelf carcasses? I don't think it is an accident that right in the middle of Go Go Tales there is a scene with gourmet hot dogs being cooked the gourmet way - in microwave ovens, while the beautiful go-go dancers cook themselves in a faulty tanning bed.This isn't to say that Go Go Tales was badly acted - it was very well acted for what it is - a meandering vignette of a failing second rate strip joint; a metaphor for how even the most exotic dreams and aspirations are subject to blandness like anything else. It plays out like a cabaret stage production, a bit of aimless vaudeville salted with an undercurrent of subtle existential humming: A page out of Cassavetes' Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Like 'Chinese Bookie', this film offered more pleasure for me in the thinking about it afterward than it was to watch.I can't say that I didn't like it, and I can't say that I want to watch it again. But for a gourmet hot-dog, it wasn't terrible; it was mostly just a regular hot-dog made with some Hoskins, Dafoe and a dash of Modine, thrown in a microwave and served in the bawdy atmosphere of a musky strip club.