{"id":819,"date":"2010-04-24T10:26:42","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T15:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?p=819"},"modified":"2021-08-26T10:24:22","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T15:24:22","slug":"passenger-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/24\/passenger-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Passenger Side"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Bissonnette\u2019s Passenger Side<\/em>, a Canadian indie feature that played at the Wisconsin Film Festival last week, is a road movie that stays within very narrow parameters by mapping a specific place \u2013 the city of Los Angeles and vicinity \u2013 during the span of a single day.<\/p>\n

The title of Passenger Side<\/em> derives from a song by the band Wilco. The lyrics talk about not liking to sit on the passenger side while having to depend on someone to get around because of an impending court date. In Bissonnette\u2019s film, Tobey (Joel Bissonnette) imposes on his older brother Michael (Adam Scott) to drive him around Los Angeles for reasons that are unclear initially. The two brothers, Canadian expatriates, present a study in contrasts. Michael is a novelist, while Tobey is an ex-junkie. Michael acts put upon and seems to resent Tobey for a host of reasons, including the fact that he\u2019s forgotten that it\u2019s his thirty-seventh birthday.<\/p>\n

The film begins with the sound of a phone ringing for a long time. Michael, wearing black shorts and a tee shirt, finally answers by saying \u201cFuck you.\u201d After arguing briefly with Tobey, he hangs up and proceeds to leave the phone off the hook as if he\u2019s just encountered some aggressive telemarketer rather than his brother. He only agrees to chauffeur Tobey around after their mother intervenes.<\/p>\n

Michael acts superior to Tobey, who is equally critical of Michael. As the film progresses, Tobey takes issue with the fact that Michael is sloppy, doesn\u2019t show a lot of sympathy for other people, and hasn\u2019t bothered to learn Spanish even though he\u2019s been living in LA for years. Michael is also something of a Luddite, preferring a 1975 BMW, audio cassettes, a black and white TV set, print newspapers, pay phones, and listening to hockey games on the radio. In short, he seems to be someone who is desperately trying to hold onto the past.<\/p>\n

The two brothers have a strained relationship and apparently haven\u2019t seen each other in awhile. Much to Michael\u2019s surprise, Tobey has read his brother\u2019s novel recently, but doesn\u2019t find the portrayal of either him or their mother very flattering. Michael insists the book is fiction and that the characterizations are exaggerated out of necessity. He claims to be writing a new novel, but it seems to be based on the events that are unfolding. Their interactions during the day consist of witty and acerbic banter, which, along with Tobey\u2019s quest, provides the film\u2019s forward momentum.<\/p>\n

Michael becomes convinced that Tobey is seeking drugs, but that turns out to be a red herring. Passenger Side<\/em> is highly episodic. As the brothers drive around, they encounter a series of characters, including a transsexual prostitute friend of Tobey\u2019s, a desert psychic who insists that Michael harbors secrets, a Mexican immigrant who has chopped off some fingers and has to be taken to the hospital, a production assistant on a porno shoot, a hostile gas station attendant, and a drunken woman with bad politics.<\/p>\n

One of the film\u2019s funnier scenes occurs when Tobey lets the drunken woman into their car against Michael\u2019s protests. At one point she discusses the fact that she loves George Bush, who wasn\u2019t a fag about doing what he had to do. Michael responds, \u201cAre you talking about the war where we killed hundreds of thousands of people for no reason? Totally. You\u2019re right. I\u2019m sure glad he wasn\u2019t a fag about that. It\u2019s awesome.\u201d Michael sarcastically suggests that she\u2019s wasting her time in Los Angeles and that she should go back to Washington and start a political blog. The two brothers engage in a heated argument when Michael wants to ditch her at a coffee shop.<\/p>\n

As the film progresses our perception of the two characters changes, as does their relationship to each other. Although Passenger Side <\/em>relies on a very dialogue-driven screenplay, Bissonnette intersperses purely visual passages. He also integrates a fine music score put together by Mac McCaughan of the indie rock band Superchunk. Right after the Canadian-hating gas station attendant flips them the finger, for instance, there\u2019s a moving shot from the car. We see an oil rig in the dark blue ocean, which serves as a focal point, while a sandy beach passes by in the foreground and we hear the song \u201cSuzanne\u201d by Canadian singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen.<\/p>\n

Passenger Side<\/em> is very much a well-acted character study and genre piece, but it succeeds largely due to a smart script that includes a number of unexpected twists and an ending that comes as a surprise (even if the clues have been there right along). Bissonnette sees his film as a throwback to1980s American indie cinema \u2013 to films by Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, and Alex Cox \u2013 and indeed Passenger Side<\/em> has a certain retro quality. He told an interviewer<\/a>: \u201cI enjoy these films as works of art, but I also have this idea that they stand as a sort of last gasp of romance and mystery in popular North American cinema, and I strongly believe that art, romance and mystery have a place in that arena, even in light of all evidence to the contrary.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Bissonnette\u2019s Passenger Side, a Canadian indie feature that played at the Wisconsin Film Festival last week, is a road movie that stays within very narrow parameters by mapping a specific place \u2013 the city of Los Angeles and vicinityRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4330,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions\/4330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}