We don?t see the writer in Robert Longfellow (Martin Donovan) for some significant time in Collaborator, Donovan?s pensive, carefully woven writing and directing debut. Robert is a stalled playwright, and when we meet him, he's fleeing New York after poison-tipped reviews have slain his latest, long-awaited effort. Headed home to Los Angeles swaddled in self-pity, he must attend to his mother (Katherine Helmond), some Hollywood hack work, a simmering movie star (Olivia Williams) and a frustrated wife (former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur) stashed in a frosty East Coast locale. But Robert looks mostly inward, giving everyone else the vague but warm-eyed attention Donovan has brought to his work as a Hal Hartley muse and in a host of supporting roles.
He?s at his fuzziest with Gus (a hulking David Morse in a handlebar mustache), formerly the shady older kid from across the street, currently the ex-con still living with his mother opposite the Longfellow homestead. Gus has a habit of sneaking up on Robert while he?s home visiting his mom, and in his gracious, facetious way Robert agrees to have a beer with him before he leaves. Of much greater concern is a long-anticipated assignation with Williams (assured in a small, tricky role), whom Robert turns to for comfort, damn those clich�d torpedoes.
A lot of Collaborator?s moving parts shouldn?t work, from the celebrity there for the taking to the painful contrast of smug self-consciousness and barreling authenticity set up between Robert and Gus. But Donovan manages to find a convincing balance between broad strokes and a small canvas, so that when Gus turns a guilt-induced beer between the two men into forced captivity, rather than gory melodrama what takes shape is a character piece that makes a literary job of deconstructing the hostage thriller.
Morse…
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