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LOSERS LOUNGE
Produced by DL Sites
Directed and Written by Don Boner
Edited by Jason Jolliff
Director of PhotographyJoey Ferdinando - Brain Talbot
Mariana Walker - Autumne Sorgius
Capt. MacPhearson - Bob Charlock
Lisa Losers - Vicki Smith
Mayor Paxton - Bob Williams1948. Passionville, Indiana.
Small town American never felt so heavy. Just across the border from Chicago, Passionville is the kind of town you go to when your time has run out in the big city. It's the place you go if you want to get lost, even if just for a little while. And everyone knows not to ask questions; everyone has a story and they aren't always pretty.
That's the most enjoyable part of Don Boner's LOSERS LOUNGE, everyone has a story. We don't get to hear them all, but bit and pieces come out as the layers of each character are revealed. As an audience, we have to guess the rest of the story ourselves.
It's their history of each character that makes them all walking contradictions, or rather how each character deals with their history. Some are trying to get lost. Some are merely trying to exist. Some are trying to start fresh. While others are trying to make amends. They don't always make the right decisions, but they make the ones that come closest to giving them hope.
Losers Lounge, owned by Lisa Losers, is where all their dysfunctional worlds collide. The lounge is a place where men can go to have a drink in peace and a piece of the hostesses in the back room. Again, no questions asked. No demands made. The unspoken rules of Passionville apply just the same to the Lounge if not more so - a person's business is his own.
Joey Ferdinando is a regular at the lounge, except he rarely "sleeps" there. He prefers to do his womanizing in his office. A former cop, Ferdinando now pays the bills as a P.I. working infidelity cases. And he's not above sleeping with his clients, or lying to them if the price is right. Stripped of his honor as a cop, he's just trying to get through the day without making too many waves.
Marianna Walker is the new girl in town, fresh from the farm. She takes a job at the Lounge with the understanding that she's "not a whore." Like everyone in Passionville, she isn't what she seems. Scared and molested as a child, she's just looking for a new life. Some tenderness in the face of life's cruelties.
Mayor Paxton is the sole legal official on Ferdinando's side, and not out of loyalty. Each has something on the other that keeps favors in check. As an audience, we don't know, we don't have to know. Passionville is a town breed out of corruption, whatever happened between the two stems from there.
Razor is Ferdinando's assistant, or close to it. Somewhere in his tweens, he thinks he can take on the world, but he's not a leader. As much as Razor would hate to admit it, he can't exist without someone like Ferdinando to watch over him. Razor is the Prodigal Son searching for a father to return to.
All of these lives collide when one ends up dead. Using film noir conventions to explore classic melodrama, Boner doesn't so much craft a mystery as he does a slice of life in mid-west Americana. He allows the characters' flaws and contradictions to drive the story, pealing back the layers of story one subtle beat at a time. You could argue that the movie moves at too leisurely a' pace, but I didn't mind. I can watch interesting characters all day long. Trying to figure them out is half the fun.
Passionville itself is a contradiction. People passion's are what caused everyone to exile themselves to the little burg in the first place. Boner knows that it's contradictions that make people and places interesting. When you've scratched the surface, you want to see more. Often you won't like what you see, but you walk away with a better understanding of why things are, of why people do the things they do. Pain walks hand in hand with passion, and that's what Boner is trying to tell us. It's pain that we are all running from.
The DVD for LOSERS LOUNGE contains audio commentary and a trailer.