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The Blackout (1997)

Dir: Abel Ferrara

Matty (Matthew Modine) is a hard-living, hip movie star who is burning out both in his professional and personal life.
While vacationing in Miami he asks his girlfriend Annie (Béatrice Dalle, who was twice arrested for drug use during shooting!) to marry him, thinking she is still pregnant with their child.
But when Annie informs him she has recently had an abortion because she of Matty's drug fuelled lifestyle (something Matty actually told her to do when angry and high, but then forgot about) he flies into a rage and goes on a wild self-destructive binge of drink and drugs.

Matty begins hanging out with the very strange Mickey Wayne (Dennis Hopper), the owner of sex-club/video movie-studio who he knows and who's been using Annie in his latest bit of 'Video Art'.
One morning Matty meets a young waitress, who coincidentally is also named Annie (Sarah Lassez), and later picks her up with Wayne, who sets up a sex video shoot between them.
A blasted Matty then suffers a blackout and wakes to find a haunting memory of that night eating into his brain and Annie, his Annie, is still nowhere to be found.

Trying to clean himself up Matty heads back to New York, sees a Psychiatrist and meets a woman named Susan (model Claudia Schiffer) who he sets up home with.
But Matty finds he has still got to come to terms with what happened that night in Miami……..

 

Perhaps only "New Rose Hotel" and "'R Xmas" split critical opinion more than "The Blackout" on the merits (or lack of) of an Abel Ferrara movie. But with successive visits "The Blackout" reveals many fascinating aspects and actually much to enjoy for fans of the Director.

The main on-going plot strand in "The Blackout" is how these people are all deluding themselves about who they are, what makes them tick and how they truly feel towards their acquaintances and the society around them.
Matty is a self-centred adrenaline junkie who deludes himself into thinking he is a man who can love.
He openly denies the hateful words he said to Annie, about how she has been screwing around, that the baby could be anyone's and that he wants her to "cut it out" of her body, and states he wanted the child, that he would never say such things (despite hearing it himself on a tape Annie made) and that Annie was the other half of himself.
His selfish attitude to Susan also shows that she is of little importance in his life, but only ever comes close to admitting this at the end.
At one point Wayne actually says to him "Know when your acting is shit, know when you're faking it, know when you're fucking lying".

Mickey Wayne himself is a tripping egocentric who deludes himself he is more than just a sexed up pornographer by making grand public statements about himself, his 'associates' and his work ("We are Video Artists") and coating the whole, high tech, high rolling exercise in sordid self satisfaction with a veneer of artistic respectability and worth.
As he sits watching his high gloss porno 'interpretation' of Emile Zola's novel "Nana" on a monitor (playing opposite the 1955 straight movie adaptation) he mutters to himself, "this is real, real, real, real" and you have to wonder if he is actually trying to persuade himself of this, more than stating a supposed artistic fact about his 'creation'.

A key sequence that shows this complex web of self-deception and delusion is when a wasted Matty makes-out with the 'new' Annie, obviously thinking he is with his lost Annie (another delusion, only this time happening unconsciously due to the drugs and drink).
But this is a wonderfully tricky delusion the script (by Ferrara, Marla Hanson and Christ Zois) offers up as it plays with the viewer's perception of what they are seeing by instilling a doubt about whether the 'new' Annie really is a different Annie at all.
Perhaps the perceived delusion the audience is seeing Matty go through (and that Wayne goes along with, but in such a way as it makes you wonder if he too is playacting), is in reality our delusion, manipulated by what Ferrara shows us, and not Matty's.
Or perhaps not, after all movies themselves are a fantasy masquerading as fact and it's this constant playing with what is real and honest and what is deluded and deceptive that is an aspect of the film that turns many off (Ferrara can be overly pretentious and self-gratifying at times) but is in actuality the movie's true strength

A wider delusion is that of perceived friendship.
Matty and Wayne act as buddies but at times the mask slips and shows the genuine mistrust Matty has towards Wayne as well as the obvious cynical manipulation of (and even jealousy of) Matty by his so called friend.
Wayne's associates at his movie studio (a sort of pretentious pornographer's collective) also play the game of friendship when it suits, but are shown many times in nasty, selfish arguments. Everyone seems to be out for themselves but no one is honest enough with themselves, or others, to admit it.

As with ALL of Ferrara's movies performances are vital to the film succeeding as a full and rounded creation.
Dalle looks stunning and Ken Kelsch's camera caresses her as much as the figure hugging dresses she wears.
But as the enigma that is Annie she is not given much to do (and Schiffer has even less with her late-in-the-day character) but makes a strong visual impression that lingers within the film nearly as much as her character does in Matty's mind.

Modine, away from his more mainstream roles, is surprisingly good as the destructive, damaged Matty. There is a small sense of theatricality about his portrayal of the character's plunge into drug despair but as the film's lynchpin he has a lot of responsibility (Matty is in almost every scene of the film) and if he really did fail in his performance the whole film would fall apart, and it's to his credit that he carries this weight on his shoulders well.

Hopper is on top 'manic' form (though without the honest power and complexity he brought to the role of Frank Booth in David Lynch's stunning "Blue Velvet") and shouts, swears and generally rants with great enthusiasm.
And this wild energy of Hopper's makes the seamy side of Wayne shine like a sickly light in the darkness of fakery and despair that the film exists in.
The sequence where he gets two women to make out with each other, as he videos them, is a particularly trashy delight, "Keep rubbing it baby, rub it baby! Now make her nipples hard…Spank her, give her a little spank. Spank her, make it pink…Say 'fuck me baby', say 'fuck', 'shit', 'cocksucker', 'motherfucker'"!
And his finale rant to Modine is a masterclass in how to deliver a speech literally overflowing with expletives but keep it ultimately grounded (and as such remain powerful) by skilfully avoiding the trap of unintentional humour that can come with excessive amounts of swearing.

Although there is a indeed a lot of swearing in the script, the most affecting is the screaming attack on Annie by the drugged up Matty when he tells her to get rid of her baby. The brutal descriptions of what he wants Annie to do, and the excessively cruel remarks about her, are truly stinging in their hatefulness. So aggressive in fact, that they perfectly instil in the viewer the same shock and disgust that Annie must have felt.

"The Blackout" is one of Ferrara's most sexual films (though it lacks any full frontal nudity until the final shot) and he crafts some suitably glossy, raunchy sex scenes, but like the lives his characters lead they come across as empty, totally bereft of honest passion and full of counterfeit emotion.

The Joe Delia/Schooly D soundtrack plays (as in all Ferrara films) a vital part to the movie's overall dynamic and if the Schooly D vocals are pretty average (certainly his work here is not as balls out as the songs used in "King of New York" or as compelling and driving as "'R Xmas") then Joe Delia's instrumental backing and soundscapes are brilliantly effective.

A comment on 'The Internet Movie Database' concerning "The Blackout" makes a simple but effective observation…"No actual plot but something to say".
Now although I would not go so far as to say there is 'no' plot, the film is most certainly a piece whose observations and conclusions on it's characters and their lives are far more important than the basic main plot line, which really is a hook to hang those observations on.

Definitely not a film to start with if you are new to Ferrara, but if you are already familiar with his output then "The Blackout" offers much to get your teeth into and it's faults and sometime pretensions are as nothing compared to it's strengths.