September 23–30, 1999

movie shorts

Best Laid Plans

Mike Barker’s noirish Best Laid Plans stars Reese Witherspoon, one of the great pouters of our time. Whether playing the extra-nice virgin in Cruel Intentions or the overachieving perky vixen in Election, she’s got a fabulous (sometimes ferocious, sometimes tremulous) chin-out look that she uses often and well. Here she plays a girlfriend, hardly a great part, but it’s her face that makes any of this movie hold together. We first meet Nick (Alessandro Nivola) as he’s partying with his big-mouthed college buddy Bryce (Josh Brolin). A beautiful girl clearly looking for — or like — trouble (Witherspoon) walks by their seedy-bar booth, and before you know it, she’s hooked up with Bryce and Nick is on his way home, leaving the couple alone. Cut to the credits. Cut to entwined hands in mid-sex act.

Sometime later that night, Bryce calls Nick, terrified and incoherent — "I’m in big fucking shit!" — because the girl has accused him of rape. In a panic, he’s hit her and tied her up in the basement. The film then indulges in some heavy-duty symbolism suitable for its Southern California setting: On his way to Bryce’s, Nick drives by a brushfire and firemen doing battle. They wave him on into the night. At his destination, Nick checks on the girl (her name seems to be Katey). She is bruised and bloodied, her mouth is gagged, her tears have bedraggled her mascara. Nick observes, "The situation is not very good."

No shit. But it soon becomes clear that Nick’s relationship with the girl (her real name is Lissa) is not what it seems to be. While the dialogue at this point revolves around whether or not Katey-or-Lissa is "hurt," Witherspoon’s beat-up face and several subsequent flashback scenes (dating back four months) suggest that her pain is much deeper than could be caused by some lughead hitting her. But the film never gets beyond this superficial treatment of the girl’s pain — or anyone else’s for that matter. Instead, it relies on capers and sly plot twists, with an emphasis on your increasing distrust of what you’re seeing.

The focus of your distrust is Nick, whose motives appear to make him as heartless as he is wifty-looking. And the only reason you go along with any of this silliness is Lissa (and yes, Witherspoon’s evocative, intelligent, yearning, pouty face is crucial for this development). Most disappointing is the fact that the movie relies on the unimaginative premise that the specter of an abused girl — raped, punched, used as bait for a deadly and ill-conceived scam — stands in for the hero’s emotional development. If she lives and forgives him, the movie has it, he learns his lesson and you can leave feeling all right.

—Cindy Fuchs