Beautifully photographed film, in lovely black and white (with a handful of color flashbacks). The Buenos Aires setting provides a kind of Paris in the 1950s milieu, and heightens the distancing required for this story about an estranged son to really work. Vincent Gallo inhabits the title role given him by writer-director Coppola. Maribel Verdú is quite nice as his girlfriend, and so is the rest of the cast including the young Alden Ehrenreich and the terrific Klaus Maria Brandauer in a key cameo role.
Maybe this is not supposed to be a problem, but it's hardly difficult for a reasonably attentive viewer to guess this "family secret" long before the two hours that Coppola takes to reveal it - and to hope that it's surely something less predictable. One can also question the sudden fame that a cultural critic named "Alone" is able to bestow on a playwright with virtually no previous career. Even Francis had to turn in a monumental work, "The Godfather," before achieving his own "instant fame."
For me, the story of the film wants to be an opera, with all the stops pulled out. Let every member of the cast sing their hearts out about the anguish, desires, loves, hopes, and fears that drive them. The play "Fausta," which we see part of in this film, with an actor in drag playing a female Mephistopheles, comes close to capturing the creative energy that such a project would unleash. On film, which gives us beautiful surfaces to look at instead, the passions that lie at the heart and soul of the story seem remote and stifled. Recommended for Vincent Gallo fans and film historians with an interest in Coppola's oeuvre.
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