Richard Linklater's new film, "Tape" is the most jarring film of his career. The film takes place entirely in a hotel room in Michigan where the main character, Vince, (played by Ethan Hawke),is downing two beers at once. He is waiting for the arrival of his old friend, John, (Robert Sean Leonard), an indie film-maker whose new film is playing at a local film-festival.
Vince's motivations for seeing John have less to do with seeing his friend again and more to do with confronting him about an incident which happened when they were younger. Apparently, back in their high school days, John raped a woman named Amy, (played by Uma Thurman). Amy was Vince's ex-girlfriend and someone whom both men are still infactuated with. However, the story is less about the somewhat ambiguous question over whether or not John raped Amy and more about these two characters and their lack of control over their lives. If any character in a Richard Linklater film can be described as a loser, it's Vince. He drinks beer, smokes pot and snorts coke throughout the entire movie. He is a drug-dealer who deludes himself that he also has a legitimate job, and therefore control over his life, as a volunteer fire-fighter. John, on the other hand, seemingly has more control over his life, but that's only because he deals with his shattered ego internally while Vince deals with it externally. John has a dream job - a young up and coming film director whose movie is playing at a film-festival. And yet, he is terribly dissatisfied with his life. He tells Vince that the film festival is only showing his film once in the afternoon and that it is only a small film-festival, anyway. One gets the feeling that the only reason why John hangs out with a guy like Vince is to feel secure in his own existence. He only seems relaxed wheh he tells Vince that he should get a life.
Two-thirds of the way through the movie, Amy herself makes an appearance in the hotel room. And it is then that we realize that all this time she has been merely a pawn in these mens' lives to allow them to feel they were in control of their own lives. Whether or not John raped Amy or merely had violent concentual sex with her, that situation was all about the self-conscious John feeling that he was controling someone else since he couldn't control his own life. And Vince's defence of Amy's honor has more to do with the fact that Amy never went all the way with him and John did. As it turns out Amy is the only one who has any control over her life. And, subsequently it is she who uses these two men as a kind of revenge at the way they have been using her. This is a very daring and extremely unconventional film which will have a hard time finding an audience. Certainly, it will not be for everyone. Visually, it is far different from any film Linklater has made in the past. In films like "Before Sunrise" and "SubUrbia", Linklater's camera was brilliantly unobtrusive, enabling us to quietly observe these charcters and what makes them tick, with Linklater never drawing attention to the camera. In "Tape", on the other hand, the viewer feels like a voyeur intruding on something that has nothing to do with them - the way Amy herself probably feels when watching these two men. And the camera is constantly drawing attention to itself to the point where it's actually distracting and even infuriating. If the sight of people talking in previous Linklater films felt inviting, this feels more like an uncomfortable situation you can't get out of.
