Barfly

The first four letters say it all. Nostalgie de la boueliterally, nostalgia for mudtends to motivate Barbet Schroeder’s fiction films, which have focused on heroin addicts (More), hippies (The Valley Obscured by Clouds), masochists (Maitresse), and gamblers (Tricheurs). This 1987 treatment of flophouse drunks, his first American film, is no less voyeuristic. Working from an original and autobiographical screenplay by Charles Bukowski, Schroeder amasses a lot of talent to yield what is essentially a tourist’s-eye view of the lower depths, defended from within as a way of life. An unshaven Mickey Rourke delivers his lines like W.C. Fields and swaggers like a gutter prince, Faye Dunaway as a fellow alcoholic seems even more authentically disassembled, and Robby M

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