DVD review: Lonesome Jim

Lonesome Jim was made in 2005, two years before Steve Buscemi's last directorial DVD release, Interview, in which he also co-starred. If that was atypical, this one is very much in the tradition of Trees Lounge, his debut. They're both virtual definitions of the independent film: very small, very cheap, very personal. If Trees Lounge was semi-autobigraphical for Buscemi, debut writer James Strouse is the man in the frame here: there are three Strouses on the cast list, including his nieces, playing his lead character's nieces, and as location manager, Strouse secured the use of his parents' factory to stand in for his character's parents' factory. The reason for its appropriately slackerish release may be from the increased profile of its lead, Casey Affleck from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (he played the latter). Lonesome Jim follows an established template for small films of having a lead character from a big city go back to his roots. (Junebug and Garden State are recent, livelier examples.) The film is about inconsequentiality, despair and failure for the most part, but it has its lighter moments, most of them from an uncle called Evil, who sells drugs out of the family factory, inadvertently leading to the arrest of Jim's mother, in the film's only bit of genuine plot, unless you count a hint of romcommery with Affleck and Liv Tyler. Lonesome Jim feels like a learning process; Strouse went on to become writer-director of Grace Is Gone, an award-winner so far seen here only at the London film festival.