Living Out Loud Written and directed by Richard LaGravenese Starring Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito and Queen Latifah   A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Touched by a diva: Celine and Wynonna on "Angel" sweeps episode Hard Core Logo Reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir Bruce McDonald's stirring mockumentary paints a dark but vivid portrait of one band's wavering devotion to its punk identity   R E C E N T_. M O V I E S The Siege Reviewed by Charles Taylor A fair portrayal of how terrorism is used to justify racism (11/09/98) Elizabeth Reviewed by Laura Miller In Shekhar Kapur's new film, the "Virgin Queen" restrains her passion for men, but exhibits a ravenous appetite for ruling England (11/06/98) Velvet Goldmine Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek Todd Haynes' flashy ode to the glam-rock era may be 50 percent polyester, but it's full of heart (11/06/98) Home Movies By Charles Taylor "To Be or Not to Be": Vain Polish actors vs. buffoonish Nazi killers in a classic, controversial comedy (11/02/98) Life Is Beautiful Reviewed by Charles Taylor Roberto Benigni's comic fable about one family's struggle to survive in a Nazi concentration camp is in offensively poor taste (10/30/98)   BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

HOLLY HUNTER AND DANNY DEVITO NEARLY FIND LOVE IN THE BITTERSWEET COMEDY "LIVING OUT LOUD." BY CHARLES TAYLOR | It's easy to forgive the sentimental passages in "Living Out Loud" because there's scarcely a false moment in it. Making his directing debut, screenwriter Richard LaGravenese is working familiar territory. "Living Out Loud" is about two lonely people lost in the big-city symphony of sex and longing. Why isn't it mush? Because LaGravenese is hip to the melancholy romantic fantasies he's indulging here. He knows there's something simultaneously funny and delicious about letting yourself slide into the sort of luxuriant funk where cocktails and torch songs are your most trusted companions. "Living Out Loud" makes a joke of its characters' penchant for self-pity without putting them down. It doesn't have the sort of fast-talking, wised-up attitude that still beguiles us in the romantic comedies of the '30s, but it's far from the shameless yucks-and-sobs formula employed by James L. Brooks in pictures like "As Good as It Gets" (to which some hapless reviewers have compared it). LaGravenese is too loopy to be that calculated. If dry martinis could produce pipe dreams, the result would be "Living Out Loud." LaGravenese's screenplays have included some gems ("The Fisher King," "Unstrung Heroes," "A Little Princess") and he's had a hand in a share of duds ("The Bridges of Madison County," "The Mirror Has Two Faces," "Beloved"). In "Living Out Loud" he's trying to bring together his taste for romance with his flair for fantasy. New York is Wonderland to him, and the city, looking sparkling and sleek, has put on its best for John Bailey's camera. "Living Out Loud" is less successful in the scenes that turn out to be fantasies than in the ones that LaGravenese films as though they were fantasies. Remember the scene in "The Fisher King" when Grand Central Station turned into a ballroom, with rush-hour commuters waltzing round the grand concourse? "Living Out Loud" achieves that same sort of magic when Holly Hunter, blissed out on ecstasy, leads the dancers at a lesbian after-hours club. She could be every white girl living out her fantasy of being Diana Ross and the belle of the ball. But the scene isn't set up just for laughs. It's a fulfillment of one the loveliest potentialities of the movies, the unexpected connections people find in chance encounters. Carrying a charge that's both erotic and full-hearted, it's one of the most beautiful moments in any movie this year. There's a scene later on that's nearly as beautiful, when Hunter walks down a Manhattan avenue on a late summer night while people hang out on their stoops, with Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summertime" wafting on the breeze. The movie's unlikely couple, Judith (Hunter), a recent divorcee, and Pat (Danny DeVito), the elevator operator in her Fifth Avenue apartment house, aren't exactly lost souls. They both know how they've landed where they've landed; they just want something more than what they've wound up with. Judith dropped out of medical school to marry her cardiologist husband (the gifted Martin Donovan) and slowly winnowed out her friends because they didn't fit her posh new lifestyle. When he leaves her for another woman, she's left with their swanky digs but not much else. Pat, who's resisted going to work at the family bar where he sees his brother settling into the same routine that swallowed their parents' lives, picks up what he needs to get by via poker games, the occasional odd job and loan sharks, who are after him to pay his tab. He can look out for himself, but the death of his teenage daughter has left him wanting someone else to look out for, too. The bittersweet comedy of "Living Out Loud" is the comedy of two people making an unlikely connection that still isn't the one they're longing for. Judith and Pat become fast friends over late-night heart-to-hearts with scotch and coffee. Each is just what the other needs, but still less than they want. Pat is in love with Judith, though she can't return his feelings. If their coming together is a contrivance, the particulars of their I-love-you-but-don't-want-to-sleep-with-you friendship feels exactly right. "Living Out Loud" is a lovely, extended riff on the tenderness and frustration of those relationships. LaGravenese is smart. He doesn't belabor Judith's rejection of Pat, or think that it would put a stop to the affection between them. In addition to proving sensational at directing actors, LaGravenese provides Hunter and DeVito with good, sharp writing that functions in the voices of their characters; it never feels as if they're ventriloquist dummies for his lines. They are singers, though. LaGravenese has called his movie "a closet musical," and I couldn't detect a false note in their rendition of the film's middle-aged blues. Hunter has managed the considerable feat of winning mainstream acceptance while remaining on her own loopy wavelength. I suspect that early in her career, Hunter realized she had the potential to be typecast as spunky and lovable and did everything she could to work against it. Part of the pleasure of seeing her is rediscovering the oddball acting choices she makes. She's hilarious when she's drunk at a jazz club amateur night, heckling some poor woman who's ventured onstage or, in an interior monologue, when she imagines how noble she could be by adopting a crack baby. Maybe it's the way Hunter speaks out of the corner of her mouth, but her funniest moments always seem to come at you sideways. What's most unexpected, though, are the lush, burgundy-colored bass notes she works into the performance. Many of her best moments are simply when she's by herself, watching the people around her at a restaurant or club, or alone in her plush apartment, sinking languorously into some jazz standard playing on the stereo. Hunter pulls off a tricky balancing act, playing an unfulfilled woman who's completely comfortable with her sexuality. The passion she displays here puts the bosom-heaving of that glum gothic cartoon "The Piano" to shame. In his recent performances, DeVito has been distancing himself from the shtick that was his specialty -- the lovable tugboat terror. "Living Out Loud" suggests he's abandoned it altogether. DeVito doesn't simplify Pat or condescend to him. He doesn't milk Pat's grief over his daughter's death or shortchange it (the unexpected humor of the scene where he tells Judith of it strikes just the right tone). Most importantly, he doesn't make it cute or dear that Pat desires Judith. DeVito doesn't play the character as a frog awaiting his transformative kiss. When Pat gently folds his hand over Judith's as they sit in a club, you can see that he's already a gent. DeVito gives a warm, totally unforced performance here, his best yet. As good as Hunter and DeVito are, it's all they can do to keep the movie from being stolen out from under them when Queen Latifah is onscreen. As Liz, the jazz singer Judith befriends, Latifah is in a great tradition of sexy, sassy movie broads. LaGravenese might be sending up his own affection for jazz and soul when a white woman drunkenly tells Liz that African-Americans can really sing because they know "The Pain." But Queen Latifah proves she can really sing with one of the most difficult tests for any vocalist -- a smooth, mellow version of Billy Strayhorn's great "Lush Life." (Could it be her background as a rapper that helps her navigate the verbal rapids of Strayhorn's opening verse?) She performs the song over the credits, and after about four bars, I was a goner. Latifah binds the audience to her as easily and gracefully as she assays the notes. "Living Out Loud" feels true to the sensibility that's come through in LaGravenese's best work -- the romantic, the storyteller in love with magic and with the possibilities of the city. In "Living Out Loud" he clears out the dreck that's mucked up so many recent movie romances. He never lets the picture get bogged down in heartache, and that's why it's satisfying even though it resists tying things up neatly with the old cliché that there's a somebody for everybody. LaGravenese has a blessedly light touch when it comes to melancholy. To him, it's just another part of romance, and he digs it. SALON | Nov. 13, 1998