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TAPE Send This Review to a Friend
Two men and a woman in a motel room. They share a high school past. What is really the truth about their relationships? Was there a date rape? Can perceptions honestly differ? Resentments surface and confrontations become increasingly nasty.
This is director Richard Linklater's set-up for "Tape," which is written by Stephen Belber based on his one-act play. The scene is Lansing, Michigan, the time ten years after the three were in high school together. Ethan Hawke plays Vince, who has become a small-time drug dealer, as well as a volunteer fireman, and has come to Lansing to morally support his school chum John (Robert Sean Leonard), who has made a first film and is showing it at a film festival.
But Vince has another agenda. It is quickly clear that Hawke seethes with resentment of John, whom he believes stole his girl Amy in senior year. He pressures John into admitting that he date raped her, and when Amy (Uma Thurman), now an assistant district attorney in Lansing, shows up, John confesses and apologizes to her. But she wants to know: what rape?
The claustrophobic film isn't far removed from how it might be done on stage. Linklater augments the tension with his searching, fluid camera movements, and the inspired actors do the rest. Hawke is excellent as he grows increasingly hostile and ultimately desperate. Leonard moves from feeling victimized to bafflement as to how to handle the situation. Thurman as Amy, projecting self-assurance, gradually assumes control and succeeds in making us ponder male-female relationships that are not always as clear-cut as one would like them to be.
It is possible that you may tire of the characters and their angst, but there's no denying that Linklater has created a sharp, tense, well-acted and deliberately ambiguous film experience with a zinger of an ending. A Lions Gate Films release.
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