Mean Streets and Meaner People

By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
New York Times
Published: October 2, 2009



It takes nerve to award Bai Ling a singing role in a serious drama, but nerve may be the one thing ?A Beautiful Life? does not lack. Set among the mean streets and meaner people of downtown Los Angeles, this laughably clich?d dive into sexual masochism and hardscrabble survival replaces story with outline and characters with place holders. No wonder Ms. Ling?s breasts are the most animated objects on screen.

Unfolding in various underlighted locations ? a crummy apartment, a seamy strip club ? the movie observes the halting romance of an abused runaway (Angela Sarafyan, all eyes and attitude) and an illegal dishwasher from El Salvador (Jesse Garcia). When not comparing emotional damage, the pair engage in unsuccessful sex (?You?re the man, you?re supposed to know what to do!?) and even less successful drug dealing. Guitars twang mournfully offscreen and Ms. Ling, in the role of a good-hearted stripper and aspiring chanteuse, works a pole and a microphone as though her life depended on them.

Directed by Alejandro Chomski (based on Wendy Hammond?s play ?Jersey City?), ?A Beautiful Life? features songs with titles like ?Who?s Your Daddy?? and excellent actors (Debi Mazar, Dana Delany) with nothing to do. This is all the more tragic when you have a leading lady whose performance veers from catatonia to hysteria with no intermediate stops. ?But you didn?t make me feel good!? she wails to her long-suffering lover. Oh, honey, as if that line ever works.

A BEAUTIFUL LIFE

Opens on Friday in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

Directed by Alejandro Chomski; written by Wendy Hammond and Deborah Calla, based on the play ?Jersey City? by Ms. Hammond

In Manhattan at the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village.