DVD preview: Trouble In Mind

Forget film school. Writer/director Alan Rudolph worked as an assistant to Robert Altman on Nashville and The Long Goodbye, which beats everything else as a training ground. What Rudolph learned most was to make movies that no one else would or could make, and Trouble In Mind certainly proves this point, with Kris Kristofferson as a con returning from prison to confront his ex's psychotic new lover. It ought to be a mess but somehow it works, an often funny take on noir archetypes where the setting and time period are wherever and whenever (there are 1930s gangsters in 1950s diners fighting 1980s new wavers). Throw in such odd bits as a man found drowned in a car full of water and a mobster played by Divine - dressed as a man for once - and you've got a weird and wonderful film that fully deserves the cult status it's attained over the years.