Love Song For Bobby Long (DVD)

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With John Travolta appearing in more than a few going-through-the-motions roles over the years, it's both jarring and refreshing to see him stubble-faced and crying in a seedy bathroom, saying, convincingly, "I wet myself." It's almost as if, in down-and-out dereliction, he found a role that somehow speaks to him even more than wise guy Chili Palmer.

In "A Love Song for Bobby Long," Travolta plays the title character, a former American literature professor who's dropped out and tuned into vodka and whatever's in that glass. He's living in New Orleans with a younger man (Gabriel Macht), whom we learn was a former teaching assistant of his, a boozy writer trying to turn Bobby's life story into a novel. But the plot is really set in motion hundreds of miles away, in Panama City, Florida ("the redneck Riviera"). There, a young high school drop-out living with a lazy boyfriend learns that the loser didn't even bother to give her a message from Bobby telling that her mother passed away. Though they were estranged (and though we never learn much about the daughter's relationship with her mother), Purslane Hominy Will (Scarlet Johansson) is still understandably miffed. She leaves in a hurry and a huff, hoping to make the funeral.

Instead, she finds this stranger, Bobby, and his protégé, Lawson Pines (Macht), living at her mother's house, and learns that she missed saying good-bye to her mother by a day. The men have more eye contact with each other than hopefuls at a single bar, so it's painfully clear that there's something going on here. "We should tell her," Lawson whispers. "Better than her poking around and finding out the truth." They want her out, and yet, because she's Lorraine Will's daughter, they also want to help her. Lawson opens a suitcase of paperback classics, including The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Great Gatsby, and The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway—books they tell her were important to her mother. After an insulting exchange, during which the men inform her that Lorraine left a third of the house to each of them, and they're not leaving, Pursy grabs the suitcase and heads off. But she only gets as far as the Greyhound bus station, where she devours all of the Carson McCullers classic about a girl who befriends a deaf mute. Apparently inspired, she returns and announces she's going to live with these two alcoholics and be both supportive and confrontational about their stuporous delusions. And the men, meanwhile, become determined that she should somehow go back to school.

In this down-and-out version of "Finding Forrester" meets "Good Will Hunting," the pleasant surprise is that we're not subjected to the standard flashbacks showing Lorraine performing as a singer in New Orleans clubs, interacting with her apparently many lovers and admiring friends, or looming like a warm-fuzzy presence in Pursy's mind. Instead, everything is in the present, with the tension coming from the gradual "reveal" of the story behind the two men's relationship and the down-and-out neighbors who gather in an outdoor tent city to tell stories, play music, and celebrate the dead woman's life.

The writing is smart and the atmosphere (as so often happens with films set in the Big Easy) is thick as a Cajun brogue. There's some nifty footage of New Orleans that doesn't usually appear in cinema, and the opening shot alone shows Bobby leaving the Rock Bottom Lounge and passing through so many different landscapes that it underscores how multicultural New Orleans is, and how seedy and stately dwellings are just a short walk away. But it's the performances that will hold you as spellbound as one of Bobby's tales, told in the savory tradition of Southern storytellers. Bobby is forever quoting the literary (and philosophical) greats, and part of the fun is hearing a full tale that Travolta tells with real southern storytelling flourish (I've had drinks with a few southern writers, and know of what I speak!) and just as much fun to have him scatter those quotes throughout. "Never fight fair with a stranger," he says. "Arthur Miller." "You must work as if you're going to live a hundred years and pray like you were going to die tomorrow," he says. "Benjamin Franklin." Or "Happiness makes up in heighth what it lacks in length. Robert Frost."

First-time director Shainee Gabel based her film on "Off Magazine Street," a novel by Ronald Everett Capps, and she says that she was drawn to Scarlett Johansson because "she radiates wisdom; there's an old soul quality about her." And maybe that's what makes the main trio click as well as they do. Here we have three obviously intelligent but luckless individuals that represent three generations: Bobby in his early fifties, Lawson on the short side of thirty, and Pursy in her late teens. And yet, they interact, because of their circumstances, as if they were on the same level. Lawson learns from Bobby, Pursy learns from Lawson, and Bobby learns from Pursy. Oh, hell, they all learn from each other. Maybe what writer Gertrude Stein said really is true: that we are all the same age, on the inside. Strong performances and writing and that gumbo-thick atmosphere more than make up for the holes in the plot—like, where do these guys get their food and liquor money from, and if Pursy's boyfriend is angry or greedy enough to come all the way to New Orleans to confront her, why does he leave so quickly? I won't say any more, because I don't want to spoil the small reveals, but it's this type of illogical thing that rubs the shine off an otherwise lustrous film.