Movie Reviews : ‘Flesh’ Willing, but Plot Unable

“Flesh and Bone” proves what “The Fabulous Baker Boys” postulated, that writer-director Steve Kloves is a bred-in-the-bone filmmaker. Up to a point. For though this finely made movie displays remarkable virtues, including the most moving performance of Dennis Quaid’s career, it is also good money sent after bad, a series of impressive accomplishments recruited to serve a questionable plot.

Like “Baker Boys,” Kloves’ celebrated debut film, “Flesh and Bone” (citywide) reveals a natural filmmaker who does so many things well it’s difficult to know where to start, a gifted creator who refuses to be fenced in and do the obvious stories the obvious ways.

From its very first frames, Kloves (with the potent assistance of “A River Runs Through It” cinematographer Philippe Rousselot) shows an almost casual ability to create tension and mood. “Flesh” opens in the emptiness of Texas farm country on a quiet night 30 years in the past, a night that looks placid but feels, for no reason you can name, both menacing and unnerving.

After this brief but critical prologue, “Flesh” switches to a convincingly bleak and barren West Texas present and a character from that night, Arlis Sweeney (Quaid), who seems as at home in the arid landscape as a sand lizard.

Self-employed as a servicer of vending machines dispensing condoms and crackers on a rural route, the caretaker of a flock of tick-tack-toe-playing chickens known collectively as Brainy Betty, Arlis has the most regular and predictable of lives and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Perhaps because of what transpired 30 years ago, he is uneasy with human contact, nervous in the presence of emotion.

Kloves has a knack for making this kind of offbeat, on-the-edge character very real, and Quaid inhabits the role as he never has anything before. It is an interior, laconic performance, one that couldn’t be further from his trademark effervescent “Big Easy” persona, but Quaid, intensely masculine as always, plays it with so much force and conviction he wipes all his other roles off the slate.

Like a confident chef, Kloves gradually blends other characters into his mix. First comes the casehardened Ginnie (a striking performance by Gwyneth Paltrow), a shoplifter, con artist and worse, glimpsed out on the edge of Arlis’ world. Then there is Roy (James Caan), with ties to Arlis’ past. And finally there is Kay Davies (Meg Ryan, her bubbliness effectively muted), optimistic with little reason to be, fleeing from a bad marriage and worse luck with men.

Not surprisingly to anyone but each other, Arlis and Kay feel a wary attraction to each other, and, as “Baker Boys” demonstrated, one of the things Kloves conveys well is sexual tension and longing. While many directors get jittery when romantic connections have to be made, Kloves seems to relish them, relaxing into the situations in a natural, involving way.

As these people’s lives unfold and combine, “Flesh” manages the pleasant sense of a movie that might at any moment head off in unexpected directions. A writer of on-target dialogue that often carries a playful twist to it, Kloves is a filmmaker who enjoys crossing genre lines, turning in a mixture of romance and dark, despairing psychological thriller that is agreeably difficult to pigeonhole.

However, “Flesh and Bone” (rated R for language, some sexuality and a scene of intense violence) does finally pick a predominant direction to head off into, and it is an unfortunate one. For this film turns out to revolve around a whole series of whopper coincidences, even one of which would be difficult to swallow. Not even a film this accomplished can work up enough suspension of disbelief to enable audiences to ingest them all, and just making the attempt is painful.

One could make the case that this film, reminiscent of the dead-end writings of Jim Thompson and Cornell Woolrich, is similarly concerned with the workings of immutable fate, not flimsy coincidence. But in fact “Flesh” originated in an idea Kloves first had when he was much younger, a time when contrived plots have a regrettable tendency to appear profound. Which makes it understandable, though just as much of a pity, that a director whose abilities are so varied and so tangible should have been undone by his allegiance to such a trifling plot line.

‘Flesh and Bone’

Dennis Quaid: Arlis Sweeney

Meg Ryan: Kay Davies

James Caan: Roy

Gwyneth Paltrow: Ginnie

A Mirage/Spring Creek production, released by Paramount Pictures. Director Steve Kloves. Producers Mark Rosenberg and Paul Weinstein. Executive producer Sydney Pollack. Screenplay Steve Kloves. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot. Editor Mia Goldman. Costumes Elizabeth McBride. Music Thomas Newman. Production design Jon Hutman. Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (language, some sexuality and a scene of intense violence).