Often there comes a time when a bad (or inept, or failed) movie will unwittingly tip its hand. It could be a piece of dialogue that encapsulates a central flaw, or it might be a device that functions as damage control. In Gypsy 83, it’s a chapter when Gypsy and Clive, en route to a singing competition in New York, spend an evening with a more or less retired singer, Bambi LeBleau (Karen Black). She is congenial, down-to-earth, unperturbed and dishonest only in the sense that she is trying to put a brave face on adversity. Black has been acting for at least thirty years now (Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Easy Rider) and her screen presence and skill are so effortless that they too often go unnoticed. Her performance appears to infect Sara Rue (Gypsy) and Kett Turton (Clive) who seem completely different in this sequence, and outshines them in the rest of the film. She’s invested in the role, but experienced enough to trust her intuitions. When they decide to leave Bambi behind as if she were some kind of albatross, the irony could bring down a skyscraper. And you have to wonder if even the director, Todd Stephens, was in on the joke.
Twenty minutes into Gypsy 83, watching Clive and Gypsy tape each other in a graveyard, chilling in Clive’s basement and shocking the bourgeoisie bumpkins in Sandusky, Ohio, I wanted to pull out my hair. It’s not that I couldn’t understand why they loved each other, spent all their time together, or sought refuge in Goth regalia. Living in a middle-class, Midwestern wasteland, I’m sure jet-black hair dye and purple eye shadow would provide a great sense of relief. But it all felt so contrived. So lame. When I compare it to other films where we’re asked to sympathize with outcasts and fringe dwellers or at least enjoy their anarchy, it rings hollow.
In movies like Rumble Fish , Prey For Rock and Roll , Better Luck Tomorrow, even Rebel Without a Cause, we care about the protagonists, we understand their struggles, but we never feel sorry for them. When the Greasers kicked ass at the end of The Outsiders, you’d better believe I was cheering for them. I was yelling at the screen. Gypsy and Clive don’t even play out as antiheroes, they’re just a little too waiflike. To an excessive degree, Stephens doesn’t trust us to recognize their frailties without having them spelled out in dialogue. To let the camera convey meaning.
Sara Rue’s best moments are when she’s singing, though I think making her a Stevie Nicks clone was a mistake. She’s confident and instinctive, and it’s truly pleasurable to listen to her gravelly, magnificent voice. The rest of the time her performance and Kett Turton’s feel just horribly forced. They look really good, but lack conviction. And frankly, I never thought a film of this sort could be so hokey. During their road trip to The Big Apple the two pick up an Amish hitchhiker (Anson Scoville) and he’s so stiff (not because he’s Amish but amateurish) that you get the impression Stephens chose him solely on pretty-boy appeal.
In an early scene where Gypsy tells off a dowager, clearly intended to represent Decent Society, the movie just comes to a halt. The old woman’s speech sounds so flat and didactic. This may be in a sense accurate, but it’s bad writing, bad acting. The two women aren’t connecting with each other or the audience. It’s pretty sad when a film can’t incite animosity for a character we’re predisposed to hate.
Gypsy 83 has all the earmarks of a project that looked good on paper. And it has the plot elements for good narrative: search for identity, the missing mother, coming clean, owning up, painful truths, escape to the shining Metropolis, the homoeroticism behind fraternities. Though, of course, the problem is less about content than execution. Stephens wastes numerous opportunities to dramatize what he pisses away on text. The film is 92 minutes long, but goes it on and on. There are plausible, impressive episodes like when Gypsy succumbs to fear at a karaoke contest, or Zechariah (Amish boy on the lam) spontaneously kisses Clive on the mouth, but unfortunately, these are rare.
It’s unusual, I think, to find a low-budget, Independent film that seems so facile, so self-congratulatory. There’s no tension, no enhancement between the interpretive attitude of the filmmaker and the attitude of the actors. Such as it is. There isn’t a lot of steam behind Rue and Turton’s work. They don’t seem to be tapping into genuine passion or seething with it underneath. In a way it’s inexplicable, we see Clive and Gypsy at times of emotional upheaval; traumatic, humiliating, life-changing moments when we want to empathize, but there’s nothing to engage us. To pull us in. When we care less about the characters than we would for a Smurf.