**½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Dylan McDermott, Snoop Dogg, Rose Byrne, Seymour Cassel
screenplay by David Diamond, based on the novel by Bernard Malamud
directed by Danny Green
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Parts of The Tenants are very good indeed. Most of them involve the live-wire presence of Snoop Dogg, who, as an angry black writer named Willie Spearmint, acts as conscience/spur/romantic rival to Jewish novelist Harry Lesser (Dylan McDermott). While Snoop doesn't quite convince as a product of the film's '70s milieu, he's right on the money as a resentful, easily-provoked hard case seeking humiliating assistance from Lesser. Every time he has to flip-flop on some bit of respect or contempt for the cringing whitey, he shoots the movie straight through the ceiling–so much so that The Tenants often seems to have more to it than it actually does. As it stands, the film doesn't know what to do with source novelist Bernard Malamud's mash-up between a dithering Jew and a motor-mouthed black with nothing in common except their oblivious monomania for writing.
Lesser is the only tenant left in a tenement slum that landlord Levenspiel (Seymour Cassel) would dearly like to demolish. In fact, the 'lord keeps showing up to alternately heckle and bribe the blocked Lesser, who is dragging his feet on a follow-up to his previous book (an artistic and commercial flop) and won't leave before birthing his literary baby. Squatting in a nearby vacant room, Spearmint arrives on the scene determined to bang out a magnum opus revolving around black oppression. The two open up an uneasy relationship: Spearmint asks for an opinion on his work, flies into a rage when he hears the truth, and then comes back for more, eventually entangling the pair in each other's worlds. This hits a bump once Lesser catches a glimpse of Spearmint's bragged-about white girlfriend Irene (Rose Byrne). It's love at first sight for him, which spells disaster for their respective relationships with Willie.
What keeps the film from greatness is its lack of a thesis. The two writers are complementary–there's an obvious symmetry between them, but it's up in the air as to what that could be. Aside from being painfully serious about their manuscripts, one is eternally passive while the other raises the roof. Just as you think it's illustrating a point, the ground shifts and you can't get a grip–and that's not subtlety, it's just unsureness. If The Tenants is about anything, it's about the way that certain artist types use everything as an excuse to avoid communication, with the pair of them failing to give Irene the attention she needs. But the introduction of the political element demands a little more consideration, and the film doesn't provide much on this front beyond an evocative scramble that pushes your buttons while leaving you wishing for some order.
Still, an evocative scramble is more than most movies provide–there are nuggets of confrontation in The Tenants as strong as any I've seen this year. And again, Snoop Dogg deserves much of the credit: his defensive, disappointed anger adds up to one of the most arresting performances I've ever seen. Without him, the film is a literary exercise with a couple of famous people, as McDermott and Byrne–though genuinely fine, both–don't have the fire or edge to sell themselves as anything other than actors playing parts. Snoop makes the movie out of the ordinary by pouring his heart into the material; instead of calling its bluff, he winds up lending it credibility. Had he been matched with a similar personality, this might have had even more power, but as it stands, he forces you to consider the inner life of his character far more than the filmmakers do.
THE DVD
Sony presents The Tenants on DVD in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that boasts unexpectedly lustrous colour; fine detail isn't too shabby, either. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is fittingly restrained but does justice to the more inspired uses of the LFE channel. Trailers for Dirty, Breakfast on Pluto, The Passenger, End Game, The Gospel, and Chasing Ghosts complete the package.
97 minutes; R; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1; CC; English, French subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Sony
