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'R Xmas (2001)

Dir: Abel Ferrara

The Wife (Drea de Matteo) and the Husband (Lillo Brancato Jr.) are a Latin American couple who are the seeming epitome of social grace and standing.
In reality they are smack dealers.
When not attending their Daughter's (Lisa Valens) school nativity play and doing the social rounds they are cruising down to The Bronx to mix with their pushers and cutting up baggies for street sale in a downtown apartment.

Despite their success the Husband seems out of his depth and even naive in what his 'associates' are up to. The Wife though has a no nonsense attitude to their business, cutting loose any one who she thinks is skimming from them.

It's Christmas Eve and while picking up an 'under the counter' Party Girl Doll, (the must have Christmas present), the Wife is approached by a stranger (Ice-T) and told that her Husband has been kidnapped and that she has to hand over everything if she wants him back.
The mysterious man preaches to the Wife about how stupid she is for not only sticking by her man, but for even contemplating loving such a weak person in the first place.

The stranger is an initially threatening and abrasive character but takes a softer turn as he tries to make the Wife promise that she and her Husband will stop dealing drugs, by ANY and ALL means.
He also seems to know everything about their Family set-up…..

After the extensive cult and critical success of the wonderful "King of New York" and "Bad Lt.", maverick Director Abel Ferrara hit a slump.
A double release of gangster drama "The Funeral" and abstract Vampire tale "The Addiction" gave his career a brief boost but it all went to hell big time with the almost invisible distribution and almost entirely negative reaction to "New Rose Hotel" and this, "'R Xmas".
With 2 features in production in 2005, we can but hope Ferrara comes back into the limelight and back to his creative best, but until ten lets have a look at his ill fated drug drama.

Opening with an unexpected Dickensian sequence (with subdued sepia colouring) of the children in the Christmas costumes "'R Xmas" soon settles into the dark razor sharp big city visuals so common to Ferrara's work.
As always Ferrara shoots New York perfectly, and as with all his best work New York becomes HIS City. And with the astute eye of Ken Kelsch on Cinematography ("The Driller Killer"/"Bad Lt.") the City comes alive.

Editing is as sharp as the visuals, with one booming gun shot scene-change in particular blasting the viewer out of the trance state that they have been in watching the Wife buy the Party Girl Doll for her little girl. From a (admittedly shady) purchase of a child's Christmas toy to a violent kidnapping the jolting transition is crafted to perfection and shows the ever present danger in a seemingly under control lifestyle based on illegality.

Drea de Matteo ("The Sopranos") is the main interest as far as performances go and she just drips sex appeal as the outwardly tough Wife and eclipses Lillo Brancato Jr, though the weak aspect of his character gives him little to play with.
Ice-T is basically Ice-T, though in his quieter moments he at least starts to come out of his 'entertainment persona'.
Fans of cutting edge modern thrillers, as well as Ferrara, will enjoy seeing the great Victor Argo in a tiny role but it's a real shame he was not used more.

A major strength of the film is the score by Schooly D, from a repetitive but sexy main theme that plays under all the big moves in the plot to the typically abrasive rap songs, it's a score pushes the film along when Ferrara seems to forget to.

Unlike most of Ferrara's movies there is no sex and no violence, but there is some extremely abrasive and hard-hitting language. It never goes overboard though and always feels real, never becoming 'hip' (Tarantino this not) and as with all of his films Ferrara knows how to make the dialogue a vital part of his film. Drea de Matteo's character in particular is given some good and mean lines.

But the foundations of the film though are simply the day to day, non-flashy reconsctructions of the chore of dealing drugs. The Husband may as well be clocking-in at a factory, it's tedious, repetitive work and Ferrara shows us all the details. He also has the corruption of Christmas down perfectly, be it the Mother's fighting over the last doll in the shop or the money making drug dealing taking place in rooms full of Christmas decorations. There's the twinkling tree, there's the pusher cutting a deal in front of it.

But away from all these positives the film is indeed flawed. There is little story here and quite frankly nothing much really happens.
It truly is nothing more but a very low key character study with Ferrara showing little interest in anything outside of his two main characters.
If "Bad Lt." was a character study wrapped up in some superbly balls out set pieces and events, "'R Xmas" is the exact opposite. The characters are really the only part of the story. Just like the doll the Wife gets, the film is bereft of any packaging at all. It's stripped bare and it suffers because of it.
There is quite simply not enough here to really sustain even the sparse 80 minute running time. It's a 60 minute drama padded out for no legitimate reason.
To put it bluntly…nothing much actually happens, even less is explained, and the finale is a huge case of "was that it"?
The existence of 9 various kinds of Producer screams of bullshit quite frankly and you have to wonder what the hell happened to Ferrara's once lean and mean production principles.

There is power here, there are some interesting characters here and it has that Ferrara vibe. But it's much too slight an enterprise for a full-length movie and feels somehow self indulgent in the extreme when stretched out to a feature running time.
The unfolding story is also very messy in its construction with one disconnected event skipping to another with careless abandon.

And yet miraculously the film does manage to hold the attention thanks to the performances, the dialogue, the score and Ferrara's astute Big City eye.
Thrilling it is not. "King of New York", "Bad Lt.", "Ms.45" it most certainly is not. Yet for Ferrara groupies there is a strange fascination to be had with this low-key tale.
But for general viewers there is little here to instil excitement and even less to hold the interest.