CineMedusa

Movie Reviews

by Mara Math

Capsule Review

Factotum

Factotum. Director Bent Hamer gets even the title wrong in his take on the late alcoholic poet Charles Bukowski: A factotum indeed performs many jobs, but they're usually for one employer rather than varied by reason of having been fired from each previous job. The perfection of the set design and the wonderfully louche sexuality Lili Taylor inhabits as Jan are not compensation enough: Matt Dillon's Bukowski is a monotone blowhard bore, and Marisa Tomei's inabilities are put to apt use. Hamer buys into Bukowski's grandiose delusion, quoted in voiceover, that he had a hard life because he "went all the way for the writing." No. He didn't. He went all the way for alcohol, as the film drearily insists on showing us.

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