December 28, 1995–January 4, 1996

movies

Four Rooms

A Miramax Release

This is a gimmick movie. It features four sections, set in four different hotel rooms, each directed by a hot ticket: Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Tim Roth plays a rookie bellhop, Ted, who links the stories (they're not quite TV episodes, but they have that same self-contained, going-nowhere ambience). As we follow him from one room to another, he mugs and sashays to the point that you're thinking he needs a leash: enough already. It's the kind of performance that you imagine must have been hilarious on the set, but now, with a little distance on it, seems more like some pretty crusty schtick.

Ted is a little nervous. As he heads out for his first call, he's warned by the old-man bellhop, "Keep your cock in your pants." Guess what the first episode's "Missing Ingredient" is? Turns out that a coven of witches — Madonna in black rubber (not as slick as the "Human Nature" video, but reminiscent of it), Lili Taylor, Valeria Golino, Sammi Davis and Ione Skye — is conducting a ritual to bring their goddess, who's been turned into a statue, back to the flesh. They perform their ritual with much twitching and moaning over a bubbling cauldron (there's not a moment of this that's remotely interesting: you keep waiting for the punchline). When Ted comes to deliver some last minute ingredients, they realize that they need to "get his goop" (as Madonna puts it). Next.

Ted's called to another room (by producer Lawrence Bender). He gets the number wrong, and ends up in the middle of some psychosexual drama being played out by wife Angela (Jennifer Beals), tied to a chair, and husband Sigfried (David Proval), waving a weapon. This is Rockwell's sequence: it features much eye-rolling and sputtering on Ted's part (though Angela also has her share of eye-rolling, since she's gagged most of the time and has nothing else to do). The plot devolves to the point that vomiting is a punchline (okay, at least there is one).

Rodriguez's section is the film's most engaging, because it keeps one-upping itself. Slick-haired husband Antonio Banderas and obedient wife Tamlyn Tomita go out for the evening, leaving Ted in charge of their two children, who decide to test his mettle, prank-wise. As events escalate, the imagery gets wilder, more skewed, more dramatically colored (lots of red). Salma Hayek is the dancing torso on the television's blue channel, and there's a surprise in the mattress which leads to a highly orchestrated finale.

Tarantino's section is based on an old Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, the one where Steve McQueen bets Peter Lorre that he can light his lighter ten times in a row; if he loses, McQueen lets Lorre chop off his pinky. (The reference actually makes you wish you were watching TV instead of the movie.) Tarantino is a tough-guy, insta-famous director (sometimes, self-consciousness can be overbearing), unconvincingly drunk on Cristal and apparently looking for trouble. Bruce Willis and Jennifer Beals provide background, as Tarantino plays Lorre and Paul Calderon plays McQueen, with Ted as increasingly invested observer. By the time Ted bops out of the room at film's end, the business has gone on far too long.

—Cindy Fuchs