Rating: NR
Genre:
Drama
Release Date: 02/23/1999
Dubbed: English
Sound: 1
Run Time: 102 min
Distributor/Studio: Image Entertainment
Ben Gazzara delivers a gutsy, four-barreled performance as skid-row poet and storyteller
Charles Bukowski (rechristened
Charles Serking onscreen) in
Tales of Ordinary Madness, blackly comic Italian director
Marco Ferreri's adaptation of
Bukowski's
roman à clef Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. Half soused, with a 2 a.m. shadow and street urchin rags,
Serking waltzes through the scummiest neighborhoods of the City of Angels, soaking up booze, poetry, and copulation, and lounging in flophouses and on grimy public buses. His bedmates are a midget, a string of seedy whores, and various earthy L.A. denizens, played by
Susan Tyrell,
Ornella Muti, and others; he eventually falls for a prostitute who can express her affection only via self-mutilation.
Ferreri lets
Bukowski's ribald humor flow throughout and exposes the dark erotic currents at the heart of the author's narratives. Laced with perverse, shocking imagery, this unbridled celebration of life's dark underbelly has been praised by critics such as
The New Yorker's
Pauline Kael and
Playboy's
Bruce Williamson for its "genuine audacity and risktaking."
~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide