The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, September 2-8
Gas Food Lodging (1992)
Directed by Allison Anders
You’re coasting through the impoverished roadsides of unremarkable America—Laramie, New Mexico, actually. The sparse cool of J. Mascis’s strumming fills the dry air, as do the ruminations of young “matinee junkie” Shade (Fairuza Balk, in an Independent Spirit Award-winning performance) as she struggles with her burgeoning, fracturing womanhood. Hard to believe it’s in the subtle guise of a Western. Quietly destabilizing the genre’s implicit racism and sexism, as well as keeping the violence strictly verbal and emotional, Anders refocuses the stresses of identity, isolation, and camaraderie on a family of women. Shade, her restless older sister Trudi (Ione Skye), and their world-weary waitress mother Nora (Brooke Adams) yearn to overcome the minutiae of trailer park life, but their solutions provide them no closure. Anders and company keep things light and earnest, emphasizing the discoveries over the failures, in this undersung gem of the Southwestern indie boom. Max Kyburz (September 5, 6, 11:20am at the Nitehawk)