Should
Frank have just said “no?” The consequences of the bean-counting attorney’s
drug use are pretty dire. In fact, it might just cost him everything (really
everything), but he just might reach the point where he can accept that in
Gille Klabin’s down-the-rabbit-hole freak-out, The Wave, which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.
Good
old Frank is poised to finally win some positive attention from the firm’s
senior partners when he spots a way to invalidate the hefty life insurance
policy of a fire-fighter, who left behind a wife and kids (“they always do” is
the cynical refrain of Frank’s colleagues). To celebrate his anticipated rising
position in the firm (and for a respite from his not so passively aggressive
wife), Frank joins his hard-partying colleague Jeff for celebratory drinks.
Jeff
quickly gloms onto Nathalie and Theresa, the latter of whom really makes an
impression on Frank. Consequently, he uncharacteristically joins them at an
underground house party, where he and Theresa ill-advisedly partake of a
mystery drug offered by mumbo-jumbo-spouting drug dealer (it will “hit you like
a wave” he says). For a while, they gambol in some new age dreamscape, but when
Frank wakes up, Theresa is gone, along with his wallet and all the available
funds in his bank account.
Still
tripping his lights out, Frank tries to make it through the most important
business meeting of his career. Hoping to find something to take the edge off,
he and Jeff set out in search of Theresa, only to discover she is missing in
real life too. As Frank loses time and experiences waking visions, his grasp on
reality weakens precipitously. Then things really go haywire for Frankie Boy.
There
have been plenty of reality-problematizing movies before, but the way Klabin
and screenwriter Carl W. Lucas manage to equally balance the humor and the
disorientation is really something else. This is a wild ride, with some outrageous
mayhem that does not always make total sense, but Klabin manages to fit the
fractured pieces back together in clever ways.
