The Slow and the Spacey

Anna Thomson leads a quirky cast through the misnamed Fast Food, Fast Women.

You know how wacky those free spirits are, right? Impulsive women likely to throw their clothes off and worship the sky at a moment's notice, say what they feel, talk to animals and generally act like unfettered id to some poor repressed chap who desperately needs unbuttoning. If you believe the movies, women matching this description are everywhere, and they look like Melanie Griffith (Something Wild), Sandra Bullock (since Speed) or even a young Katharine Hepburn (Bringing Up Baby). The thing is, the crazy antics are often merely a means to an end, that end being to obtain the uptight fellow after he's been suitably rattled loose. In Fast Food, Fast Women, we get a look at the free-spirited female archetype as she lives her everyday life. No car chases or uncaged zoo animals here, and while there is romance, it's no lesser or greater an element than it would be in anyone else's life.

Anna Thomson, who is best known for smaller roles in such films as The Crow and Unforgiven, takes the lead here and is almost unrecognizable (if she hasn't actually had plastic surgery since those films, she might want to berate the makeup artist, as her eyelashes and cheeks are almost at drag queen levels of overdose) as Bella, the sort of wild child who, even as she approaches 35, is prone to getting spontaneously naked or lying down in the middle of a busy New York street. (When asked what she's trying to do, her response is "I dunno, put some excitement in my Sunday morning.") Like Andy Kaufman, she works as a waitress even though she doesn't need to; we find out that she made good money briefly as a stockbroker before quitting to go lowbrow and be among "real" people at a diner.

Those real folks include an Eastern European hooker with a stutter and a black child, and a trio of aging men who sit around making cynical jokes about their failing health. Eventually, the most proactive of this group, Paul (Robert Modica), decides to scour the personals, and encounters a seemingly perfect match in widow Emily (Louise Lasser). Their burgeoning romance is one of the film's two major storylines, which occasionally cross over in unusual fashion.

The other follows Bella and her courtship dance with a guy she's been set up with by her overpowering mother. It's a situation neither party is comfortable with; the man is a womanizing British cab driver named Bruno (Jamie Harris, an uncanny Tim Roth sound-alike) who has recently had two young children dumped on his doorstep, one of whom is his. Bella, who has been fruitlessly trying to lure an aging geek of a stage director away from his wife, takes the advice of a friend who tells her that since the world is so fast-moving, she should sleep with Bruno on the first date. But not before a goofy misunderstanding occurs: Not knowing Bruno has kids, Bella opines that she hates children, thinking that to do otherwise will scare any man away. Being male, he is naturally not scared away from the sex, but forever afterward he can never invite Bella home, lest she catch a glimpse of the young 'uns.

Fast Food, Fast Women is one of those genially paced, character-driven indies, and succeeds as such very well. However, the title could be considered deceptive. Bella may be what one might consider a "fast" woman, but none of the other females are. There aren't any hamburgers or fries in sight either. The title is the name of a book Bruno is working on, but never manages to finish, though he finds a different direction by the film's end.

The movie's other major duo, Paul and Emily, are also anything but fast. Perhaps the film's greatest strength is that it doesn't quite hew to the romantic notion that two people will come together and completely subsume each other's identities. While the folks who do couple off are supportive of one another, they continue their individual goals and maintain individual quirkiness. The dating-and-mating process is depicted as notoriously difficult, and both men and women are capable of playing the field even while pursuing a particular individual. Not that that's necessarily good, but it is real, and writer-director Amos Kollek (Sue) doesn't judge them for it.