The Blackout

Abel Ferrara, to whom the Rotterdam Film Festival dedicated a retrospective in 1993, has built up over fifteen years an uncompromising oeuvre that is as preoccupied with the very lowest strata of human society as with philosophical and artistic angles.Matthew Modine, normally good at pretty virtuous roles, plays the self-destructive Hollywood star Matty, who tries to escape the cameras of the paparazzi and the fans in the hedonistic world of drink and drugs in Miami. To bring stability to his life, he asks his girlfriend Annie (Béatrice Dalle) to marry him. He argues that she is the love of his life, but he thinks she does not reciprocate his feelings enough. When he finds out she has had an abortion, he is angry and humiliated and starts to abuse her. He sinks deeper and deeper and, after a night out with club-owner Micky (Dennis Hopper) he has a blackout. The action moves to New York, where Matty tries to kick the habit with the AA. He has a reasonable relationship with the pretty Susan (a début role by Claudia Schiffer), but keeps thinking of Annie. Back in Miami it turns out that on the night of his blackout he was responsible for a brutal crime.