Though it takes place in Tallahassee, Florida, the independent drama Life & Nothing More might be described as a foreign film. Antonio Méndez Esparza, who wrote and directed it, is a Spanish émigré who’s lived in the U.S. for a number of years, and he brings to the drama an outsider’s perspective that often suggests that of an ethnographer. He likes to keep his camera at a slight remove from the action, resulting in visual compositions that balance one’s sense of characterization with a sense of social milieu. The nonprofessional cast improvised all of the dialogue, and their contributions heighten the ethnographic vibe. Méndez Esparza, often employing static long takes, allows vernacular speech patterns to shape the action as much as any of the physical behavior. Moreover, the dialogue is so consistently robust that you may not realize for a while that Life & Nothing More contains no music. Even the passages of silence, which register as punctuation in the drama, contribute to the musicality of the speech.
From here, Life & Nothing More switches gears and follows Gina for a while. We learn that she works in a diner and earns so little that she can’t afford to make necessary repairs on her car. (During her conversation with an employee of an auto body shop, we intuit that even the $55 fee to have the car towed is a big expense for her.) She lives, it seems, in a permanent state of exasperation. When a stranger, Robert (Robert Williams), appears at the diner one night and begins making advances toward her, she rejects him flat out—clearly she doesn’t have the time or the patience for another man in her life. Yet Robert keeps coming back to the diner and gradually wears down her resolve, and the two enter into a relationship. This relationship becomes the focus of the narrative, eventually overwhelming the story of Andrew’s fraught path to self-improvement. That’s not to say that Méndez Esparza loses the other plot; rather, he shows how Gina, in devoting some much-needed attention to herself, loses sight of her son. This oversight will catch up with her in the film’s tragic final act.
Directed by Antonio Méndez Esparza. 114 min. Fri 1/18 – Thu 1/24. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.
