I love this movie. It is of the genre of the absurd life in a small southern town and the humor is understated. For that reason it is apt to be unrecognized as such. But it is the North American version of magic realism with the unlikely being taken in stride by the characters and the likely made interesting. On the surface it is a tale of two people who are confused for very different reasons, who find that together they make one functioning whole. His reality is that of the artist who puts together words and images to make a feeling, and hers is him. She loves his music, words and the man. He needs security and someone to attend to reality. She is not beautiful but she understands him. He makes a plain girl who normally hides from the world into someone who values herself and enables them both to change. I love his songs too.

I just caught this film on IFC late one night and was drawn to it by two actors I've always admired in other films: Lili Taylor and Guy Pearce.Although Lili delivered her usual unique, offbeat take on a complicated character, I was especially impressed by Guy Pearce, an Aussie who nailed the Carolina dialect and surprised me by his musical acuity. I found him as magnetic as Evie/Lili did, though you wouldn't find me carving his name on my head for love or money! But I get why she did it. She's living a stultifying quiet life, wondering if she could just disappear off the face of the earth and probably no one but her devoted Dad would notice. She looks in the mirror and sees a plain, blank face and slumps through her plain, blank life. Several people have commented that his almost grunge musical stylings are way ahead of their 60's time setting, although I found no difficulties accepting that premise. Evie sees him as ahead of his time and bursting with potential, while the rest of the town (with the exception of the hoochie women attracted to his fine physique) just view him as a weirdo. And I think that's the bond that eventually makes him fall for wise and weird little Evie.I missed the first few opening credits so I didn't notice that this was an Anne Tyler concoction. But halfway through the movie I found myself thinking that the internal lives of these characters were very reminiscent of Tyler: Think about Geena Davis' quirky and devoted dog trainer pursuing the emotionally stunted William Hurt in "The Accidental Tourist," and you can see the parallels.No, this wasn't a "great" film in the Hollywood mode, but so what? It moved me. I was drawn in and wondered how their lives played out at the end. They probably should have headed for Seattle, where young Drum could have found himself giving Kurt Cobain a run for his money later on. Pearce himself should think about diversifying into a musical career: what a voice and presence! Not a flick for everyone, but it will hit home to those who are able to suspend their disbelief and "be there" for it.

This film is an absolute gem. It was filmed in and around Austin, and I didn't even know it until I saw the landscape. Not to mention the cameo of our former mayor Kirk Watson! What can be said about Lili Taylor that hasn't been better said by superior raters? She's simply amazing as Evie. I've read other reviews that claim she was too old for the part and I completely disagree. She brings a clear and clean strength to this role that was absolutely required for the part to shine as it did. She just simply glowed through the movie like a firefly. Guy Pearce made this viewer fall in love with him the way Drumstrings made Evie fall in love. Evie's relationship with her father was warm and touching. Her soul is so strong yet so fragile because of it's capacity to love that at one point I caught myself saying to the screen, "Don't break her heart. Please don't break her heart". This movie is a special treasure.

I am a fan of Flannery O'Connor's Southern gothic, the kind of short stories that define `grotesque,' where humor is slow, characters are off center, defects abound, and life is a series of stops along the born-again trail. First-time writer/director Toni Kalem (`Sopranos') channels O'Connor when a lady sitting in an early scene of `A Slipping Down Life' has a large wound on her knee, not featured but just there as the camera pans the group.Besides minor grotesqueries, the major one consists of the name Evie Decker (Lili Taylor, `Casa De Los Babys') inversely carves on her forehead with broken glass: `Drumstrings. ' `Drum' Casey (Guy Pearce, `Memento') is a soulful country singer catching wallflower Evie's fancy, implausibly marrying her, and along with her going through a few hells on the road to rebirth. The thirteen original songs Pearce sings are melancholic country, all the more impressive because of his singing.The road is littered with Southern stereotypes (O'Connor never allowed those types in her very original stories) like Clotelia (Irma P. Hall, `Lady Killers'), whose black housekeeper is a true throwback to unoriginal Hollywood typing of the early 20th century. Add Drum's rube family members and slutty Faye-Jean Lindsay (Shawnee Smith) as an oversexed, overacting girl friend and you have an inexperienced director ignoring the nuances of Anne Tyler's novel, from which Kalem adapted.But `A Slipping Down Life' belongs to Lili Taylor, who gives us a sympathetic young virgin, lovingly attached to her introverted widower father and doggedly determined to make something of Drum's talent and her life. Her underplayed demeanor and plain looks offset the grotesque mark on her forehead; her strength of character ("I've never backed down on anything in my life") serves further to distance her from the usual Southern hicks so popular in immature cinema. In his `Autobiography,' W.B. Yeats described the link between self and happiness and renewal so much a part of this film's power: `I think that all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other self; that all joyous or creative life is a rebirth as something not oneself, something which has no memory and is created in a moment and perpetually renewed.'Although the story brings no surprises and repeats some Southern chestnuts, the film ultimately succeeds because of the principals' considerable acting talent and the sheer truth of a young couple trying to escape their tyrannical roots to be reborn.