Delirious

Delirious

Grade: C+
Cast: Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt, Alison Lohman, Gina Gershon
Director: Tom DiCillo
Rated:
Runtime: 107 minutes
Release Company: Peace Arch
www.delirious-lefilm.com

Some are pretty and/or blessed, while quite a few more people inhabit less prestigious social rungs – and it sucks to suck.  So observes Tom DiCillo (Living in Oblivion, The Real Blonde), well-to-do MediocriVille inhabitant.  With a thoughtless smear of jet black, “kinda-funny-lookin” Buscemi’s character Les is painted – a misanthropic scavenger of celebrity, a paparazzi photographer.  Aside from being, like us all, a human being, he has not one redeeming quality.  Les encounters a charming, self-effacing young vagrant named Toby and takes him on as an assistant, letting him just-adequate closet space for sleep.  To no great surprise, seeing the two men stand side-by-side in public illuminates Les’s complete lack of character, kindness, and patience, especially when other warm bodies instinctively gravitate towards Toby.  Les gives Toby plenty of reasons to better-deal him, which Toby naturally ends up doing through no fault of his own (as he is virtually faultless).  Wannabe actor Toby is inevitably spotted and becomes involved in a perfect cover-story union with a perpetually cleavage-baring pop diva, performed well, as usual, by Alison Lohman.  The question becomes how can the utterly bitter Les go on living, having now had a true taste of the celebrity he’s whored himself for for years?

Really, celebrities, pretty people, happy stories, beauty personified in others – its why many people go to the movies in the first place; the vicarious experience of celebrity, fame, beauty, lust, adoration.  Could it be that those who view art, and don’t create it, are nothing more than paparazzi of a different nature?  Delirious is successful in its choice of subject matter – beyond that, it’s about as piercing as a TV movie.  The film is like the character of Toby – decent, earnest, but rather simple and ineffectual.  Alas, DiCillo.  He illuminated a world in which a select few are born into adoration and talent – God save the rest.