The Director and the Tightrope
by James Roland
Half pretentious, half humble, Ethan Hawke’s directorial debut, The Hottest State, walks a fine line between self indulgence and heart-rending beauty.
It’s a boy meets girl story, set in New York, with lots of flashbacks to reveal the origins of their neuroses and parental loathing. But this semi-autobiographical movie (based on Hawke’s semi-autobiographical novel) finds strength in the usual weaknesses, adding a touch of honesty where Hollywood usually adds clichés.
Mark Webber plays William Harding, an average, spineless, fatherless, rudderless urban male. When William isn’t acting to pay the bills, he is wallflowering the local bars, reaching out earnestly and embarrassingly to any girl who will give him attention.
One night he meets Sarah, played by Catalina Sandino Moreno (known for her starring role in Maria Full of Grace), a girl willing to listen to his painfully awkward pick-up monologue about Star Trek. The two walk home together and begin a short, passionate, tumultuous love affair.
The first forty minutes of this film are tedious. Webber and Moreno give solid performances, and their dialog achieves realism without being trite, but in terms of story they have little to work with. Drawn out scenes of sexual frustration and meaningless fights revolve around each other with no forward progression.
When the lovers head to Mexico for a preemptive honeymoon, the film finally kicks into fifth gear. Sedate, dreamlike cinematography begins to make sense as the lovers hole up in a Mexican hotel, leaving their bed only to eat in the local restaurants. Their passion grows to the brink of marriage, and the actors’ performances approach genius.
Moreno’s Sarah is delightful but emotionally ravaged. Her desire for companionship wars with a debilitating terror of commitment, and the conflict shows in every flirty smile, every cold stare. She is a faucet of hot and cold love with no temperature in between.
Conversely, Webber’s William transforms into a violently passionate, needy, overbearing lover. His descent into obsession is tactfully done; William never feels scary, but he is unsettling. When Sarah finally leaves him for good, William must confront the gaping hole in his heart. Here the story truly begins. Between bouts of stalking, William begins some genuine soul searching, traveling back to Texas to find his estranged father.
Mark Webber’s performance in the latter half of the film is career-changing. In one particularly squirm-worthy scene he leaves a string of four, unabashedly pathetic messages on Sarah’s answering machine. His seething self loathing, mixed with simpering cowardice, is incredibly volatile, so easy to overdue, but Webber weaves the emotional journey with absolute perfection.
Despite its drawn out beginning, The Hottest State resolves itself into a solid first feature. Hawke’s directing is professional, at times beautiful, and the performances he pulls from his actors (including Laura Linney as William’s trite and troubled mother) are fantastic. The film itself might fade away, but his directing career could be around for the next generation.
