BAGDAD CAFE

Percy Adlon had been directing films for almost nine years (a lot for TV, but also the much praised Céleste) before he made Bagdad Café, his first film not only funded partially, but filmed and set in America. Such is one of the unspoken truisms of many European filmmakers. For all their love of freedom of the auteur enjoyed overseas, when given a chance, few will hide their Hollywood dream. Not that Adlon should be blamed. With American backing, Bagdad Café brought him international recognition and droves of awards. But the film itself is a deadbeat.

            It may seem even shabbier since Italy’s Bread & Tulips, which was much heartier and funnier. Bagdad Café is also about a woman left behind by her husband while on holiday and left to start life anew. This time, however, the woman is a German named jasmine and played by Marianne Sägebrecht. The domestic squabble is now in the midst of the Mojave Desert and the site of rebirth is Bagdad Café, a dumpy desert truck stop, run with a lashing tongue by Brenda (C.C. H. Pounder), the uptight matriarch of the family business and frequented by mystics.

            We’ve seen countless movies about women making it without men, but Bagdad Café is the story of two unbalanced relationships. Jasmin’s husband is a hot-headed brute while Brenda is married to a man of the other extreme, a good for nothing loafer. After the rift with her husband, Jasmin checks in at the motel and the clashes begin.

            Sägebrecht is an interesting actress to watch. She makes jasmine quiet but astute, silent but firm and more than a little wily. But behind her, the movie offers no support.

            Despite its isolation, the dusty café is home to quite a cast of characters, including Rudi the New Age shaman played by Jack Palance, but they are such broad strokes we are never compelled to learn anything about them beyond their weirdness. We do want to know more about jasmine, however, and can guess that her life back home in Germany was as empty as the desert, but what her chance to breathe life into the crumbling motel means to her is a question the movie doesn’t have the soul to answer.

            If her motivation is a sense of purpose that her husband long denied her then her sympathy for Brenda is no less clear. The movie even suggests that Jasmin had to overcome prejudices to befriend Brenda, but then drops this hint out of the picture and in doing so clears the subject of race out. The suggestion hurts the movie further; her relationship with Brenda evolves from business to hostility to friendship at a speed beyond belief, especially for a woman as irate as Brenda and as supposedly bigoted as Jasmin.

            But the ultimate dismay is that the appreciation of Jasmin among Brenda and her kids is based on what she does for the motel while she is there. A skilful magician, Jasmin entertains the guests and becomes something of a draw. But when the authorities discover she has overstayed her visa and send her back home, the motel returns to doldrums, and that she made a couple of guests smile while she was there matters very little because there is no friendship or solid relationship behind it. Friendship and love last long after business matters are settled. But the love for Jasmin developed by the owners of the café is based on what she does while there and even though a happy ending is forced (she magically resolves her visa problems and returns to Bagdad Café) her blessing amounts to amusing some guests before she inevitably has to leave again.

            By all accounts Bagdad Café has the look of an amateurish effort unworthy, but Percy Adlon has remained appreciative of what the movie did for him and in its honor directed a stage musical based on it. This did better than CBS’ short-lived sitcom based on the series which cast Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton in the lead roles. After its premier in 1990, the show spiraled downward and was canceled after one season when Goldberg abruptly quit.