Willie (John Lurie) is living on the fringes in New York City when he gets a phone call that his cousin, Eva (Eszter Balint), is coming into town from Hungary and he needs to entertain her for ten days. He is not pleased with the arrangement, fearing she will cramp his style with her Old World ways but Eva proves to be pretty chill. So much that when Willie is overcome with ennui, he grabs his buddy Eddie (Richard Edson) for a road trip to see her in Ohio. The three decide to take the winnings Willie and Eddie made from cheating at cards down to Florida to escape the trudging boredom of their lives.
This is a very good example of "no matter where you go, there you are" but that's pretty much all the praise I can give it. It is smart and has a point to be made about assimilation and finding a place in the world as an outsider, but it's so fucking ugly it's hard to get that far.
It's shot like a stage play, interspersed with insane close-ups, in uncompromising black-and-white. None of the three leads are actors; they are musicians. The whole thing looks like it had a budget of negative $12. Despite all that, I will defend it as art. Not art I enjoyed, but still art. If that's your bag, it's streaming on (sigh) Max and also on Kanopy.
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