Taglines: A candidate’s private moment can all too quickly become public record.
Storyville is a movie for people who like New Orleans better when it is dark and mysterious. It is for romantics. It is not for pragmatists, who will complain that the characters do not behave according to perfect logic, and that there are holes in its plot.
They will be right, of course – this is not an airtight movie – but they will have missed the point, and the fun. The movie is a lurid example of the genre of Southern gothic excess, a story of feckless youths and crooked politicians and dangerously seductive women and secrets that creep down through the generations with their tails between their legs. It is altogether proper that Jason Robards is in the movie; he is never more at home than when playing a corrupt old patriarch, bourbon in hand, advising the young folks on how to sell their souls for the best dollar.
Robards represents the older generation in “Storyville,” although his exact relationship with the film’s hero is left murky until the very end. The hero is played by James Spader, an actor who is unexcelled at portraying lazy-eyed, hedonistic narcissists; this time, he’s a young man running for Congress, although his sense of personal immunity is so complete that he suspects nothing when a beautiful Vietnamese woman (Charlotte Lewis) invites him to visit her Jacuzzi on one of those dreary nights when all the sins are taking place indoors.
Is she really attracted to him? Or is she acting under orders from her evil father? Or is the devious Robards somehow involved? And what to do with the dead body (none of the above) which eventually emerges from Spader’s midnight rendezvous? Those are questions of interest to the other two women in the candidate’s life: His birdbrained wife, who has been on hold for years, and his former lover (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer), who is now the prosecuting attorney, and thinks he may be guilty of murder.
Storyville is a 1992 film directed by Mark Frost and starring James Spader, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Jason Robards, Charlotte Lewis, Michael Warren, Piper Laurie, Michael Parks, Chuck McCann and Woody Strode. It was released on August 26, 1992 by 20th Century Fox.
Storyville (1992)
Directed by: Mark Frost
Starring: James Spader, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Jason Robards, Charlotte Lewis, Michael Warren, Piper Laurie, Michael Parks, Chuck McCann, Woody Strode
Screenplay by: Mark Frost, Lee Reynolds
Production Design by: Richard Hoover
Cinematography by: Ronald Víctor García
Film Editing by: B.J. Sears
Costume Design by: Louise Frogley
Set Decoration by: Brian Kasch
Art Direction by: Kathleen M. McKernin
Music by: Carter Burwell
MPAA Rating: R for language, sensuality and a scene of violence.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: August 26, 1992
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