Forgotten Favourites: Trees Lounge, Steve Buscemi’s directing debut and a thing of wonder

Underrated: Buscemi's indie comedy from 1996

Actor Steve Buscemi is soooo lovely. He’s the spit of Clark Gable – if Clark had been left to rot in a POW camp or become the plaything of an inebriated dentist. And the way he moves! Buscemi’s joints seem made of jelly and just watching him swig from a bottle is as thrilling as a trip to the circus.

Anyway, this 1996 indie comedy was Buscemi’s directing debut and it’s a thing of wonder.

Tommy (Buscemi), a thirtysomething booze-hound and gambler, is part of the furniture at Trees Lounge, a tattered Long Island bar. Having flirted with a career as a stand-up comic, this semi-charming man is now an unemployed mechanic with a car, aptly, that’s kaput. He pulls himself together for his uncle’s funeral, at which point a job falls into his lap, along with an admiring girl, Deb (Chloe Sevigny, in alt-gamine mode). He starts driving an ice cream truck, with Deb at his side. Has his luck changed?

Buscemi, also the film’s writer, keeps us guessing (and laughing) to the end. This may be one of the most democratic films ever: Buscemi extends sympathy to morosely forlorn old timers, bewildered kids and everyone in between.

Take Wendell and James, two black removal guys who breeze into the bar and, in a licketysplit moment, make us recognise how narrow Tommy’s universe is. James, the younger of the two men, saunters over to the juke box. Wendell, clearly worried that James is about to choose a rap track, yells “Don’t play no stupid shit!” James, having perused the menu, mutters, “They ain’t got no stupid shit!”

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Wendell, by the way, is played by an on-fire Samuel L Jackson (one hand gesture alone is so insouciant you’ll want to grin for a year). Fans of The Wire will also recognise Lawrence Gilliard Jr aka D’Angelo Barksdale.

As it happens, every casting choice in Trees Lounge provokes pleasure, from Mark Boone Jr as Mike, an uber-fetid barfly with a secret up his sleeve, to Seymour Cassel as Tommy’s cheerfully rancid uncle.

Most memorable of all, though, is Sevigny, as the zinger-licious Deb. Tommy tells Deb that her alpha-male dad once saved his life. She drawls, “What? He almost killed you, then changed his mind?” Thanks to Sevigny, that line really gets you thinking.

Trees Lounge is crammed with toxic relationships. That said, one lo-fi couple Tommy’s ex and his best friend (Elizabeth Bracco and Anthony LaPaglia) seem on the verge of becoming soul mates, while a key character finds the nerve to try something new.

Buscemi’s movie is the opposite of bogus and leaves plenty of room for hope, though a few critics, at the time, dismissed it as “bleak chic”. Fools! They couldn’t see the wood for the trees lounge.

Trees Lounge is available to stream on Prime Video, to rent on BFI Player, Apple TV and Amazon, and to buy on Apple TV and Amazon