Tom Hardy once remarked in an interview that he had an innovative idea for a new kind of crime film. You take the same old story, the same kind of character types, right? But then you cast women instead of men. Changes things up a bit, yeah?
At the Q&A after the debut of his debut film, The Queen of Hollywood Blvd., writer-director Orson Oblowitz revealed that a similar brainwave was the impetus for the movie. Why not take the kind of antiheroic gangster figure normally played by Robert Mitchum or any number of middle-aged, beer-bellied, saggy-eyed character actors and give a woman a shot at it? With The Queen of Hollywood Blvd., it’s Mary (Rosemary Hochschild) who’s scrambling to get out of mob debt, who’s trying to untangle a criminal network of favors and getting in way over her head, who’s acting up an amoral storm as she manages a strip club and talks fresh to her girlfriend.
While The Queen of Hollywood Blvd. can often feel a tad too familiar for anyone who’s spent time reading or watching stories about the grimy underbelly of the city of stars, it adds enough of its own flair and personality to stand out from the pack. And if nothing else, it has Hochschild, herself a survivor of the industry, taking hold of the dream role that Oblowitz, her son, has written for her and pouring her everything into it.
As the film gets going, it is ‘Queen’ Mary’s 60th birthday party, and she is preparing for the party, to be held at the strip club she manages. Oblowitz takes his time laying out Mary’s world, establishing her as a dignified relic occupying empty spaces that have long since been abandoned by the tide of the town. The club may have once been a jumping joint, but nowadays it’s almost always empty, populated by scuzz-buckets and bottom-feeders. We spend time watching Mary putter about her life, dropping in on a girlfriend, lovingly chasing her son (Oblowitz himself) away from the girls backstage, sitting in an AA meeting. To us, it may seem a squalid and lonely life, but even with a limp, Mary still manages to swagger, albeit against a snake-headed cane.
But the damper comes down when a gangster from her past shows up in Mary’s office and announces that he had decided to invoke an old debt and take the club away from her. Right now. Today. Keys, please.
Mary is none too happy about this, but her early efforts to push back against this new order only results in her son being snatched up. Now Mary has to go even further down the rabbit hole and break some of her firmest rules if she is going to rescue her son and escape with her own life and legacy intact.
The plot of Queen of Hollywood Blvd. is the same sort of one step forward, two steps back mess that so many cable drama characters get embroiled in these days. None of the complications or problems that befall Mary will surprise anyone who has any familiarity with the noir genre, nor does Oblowitz have anything particularly new to say about the scuzzy core of Hollywood that gets glammered over by the movies. David Lynch more or less gave the last word on this particular subgenre with Mulholland Dr., but folks still seem intent on re-tilling that earth.
And while I do not doubt the sincerity of Oblowitz’s condemnation of the way that the town/industry/culture of Hollywood commodifies women, the way the town takes young dreamers, chews them up, and spits them out, the ol’ male gaze rears its ugly head and muddies the waters of his message. The camera never passes an anonymous stripper’s barely-clad derriere without lingering in loving close-up, an ongoing choice that is all the more unsettling given that the film contains a good deal of sexually motivated violence against women. This is Oblowitz’s feature debut, and he otherwise shows a strong command of his frame and his camera, so hopefully this is an oversight that he will improve upon as he continues.
As a writer and director, Oblowitz is wise enough to inject his familiar characters and tropes with fresh splashes of personality and humor. Cocky gangsters swagger about in tracksuits with “GOD IS DEAD” imprinted on the back, while other big bads speak in affected whispers. At one point while depositing off a body, Mary remarks to a cohort that the cave they are using was used as the Bat-Cave for the Adam West Batman TV show. Even as he punctures his town’s self-image, there seems to be a part of Oblowitz that can’t help but still be reverent towards the lineage of the place.
All these threads collide in the best scene in the entire film, a trip Mary makes to collect a gun from an old friend played by Michael Parks, in the final performance of his legendary career. Looking like his own ghost, Parks’ junkie character squats in a disheveled apartment, windows papered over with articles from yesteryear, the California sun curdling all the beauty of a bygone age into yellow discoloration. Even that late in the game, Parks was still perhaps the greatest of all character actors, imbuing his every line with weight and life, suggesting an entire other movie happening just off camera. At the same Q&A after the film, Oblowitz and Hochschild spoke of the man and their time together with almost holy reverence, and The Queen of Hollywood Blvd. ends up being the perfect, melancholy note for the man to leave on.
But this is Hochschild’s show and she runs with it. Hochschild has floated on the edges of the industry for years, but Mary is a full-stop starring role and she tears into it with everything she has. Knowing the relationship between director and star makes even the most familiar moments in Queen feel more palatable. When he throws in an homage to the one scene in Hardcore that everyone knows, he’s not doing it for the lulz or whatever, he’s giving his mother the chance to open the same vein of rage and grief that George C. Scott did. Queen is not running through standard noir beats because it has no other tunes to play, but because he wants to afford Hochschild the chance to run through the full circuit of escalating moral murk that so many men have. Hochschild makes the most out of every shot, toggling between the steely resolve that Mary shows to the world at all times and the vulnerable, desperate mother she is underneath. It’s a bravura turn, and hopefully others will pay attention.
The Queen of Hollywood Blvd. never works up the kind of pulse that the tight timeframe and high stakes would suggest. Oblowitz’s instincts seem to run towards the shaggy and the off-beat, more Sam Fuller or Jim Jarmusch than Raymond Chandler. The film is at its best when its emphasis is more on this strange, charismatic figure that Hochschild cuts, and it manages to build to a surprisingly affecting crescendo by the time credits roll.
While some elements are undercooked, there’s more than enough here to suggest that Oblowitz is a voice to watch, and I’ll be very curious to see how his next films play out. And as for Hochschild, even if she never gets this kind of opportunity or role again, Queen leaves no doubt: She rules.
