Jonas Åkerlund’s Take on Upwardly Immobile Lowlifes in Los Angeles

In Jonas Åkerlund’s Small Apartments (2012) a lonely renter, Franklin Franklin (Matt Lucas), accidentally kills his landlord. Inept and naïve, Franklin must find creative ways of disposing of the body under the watchful gaze of his offbeat, intrusive neighbors. It’s a Rear Window premise, but with a music-video-cum-Fellini sensibility.

Indeed, Åkerlund gained prominence as a music video director for a range of musicians, from Madonna to the Rolling Stones. . His most notable works include videos for Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” and “Telephone”. In the Gaga clips, Åkerlund turns grungy jails and diners into extravagant spectacles. While his music videos have always offered social commentary, his film, Small Apartments reflects more seriously on such topics, in this case lower-middle-class under-achievers on society’s fringe. Small Apartments explores the socioeconomic condition of urban isolation.

This dark comedy’s most conspicuous features, its costume-design and editing, are reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). Both films feature quick cuts, loud and exhilarating sound editing, and bright, stylized retro-futuristic costumes in a grungy urban landscape. Small Apartments can also be compared to Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby (2013) in both style and subject matter, insofar as both films follow a small group of neighbors in large, glamorous cities. But Åkerlund is more interested in turning classical themes and storytelling devices on their head. While The Great Gatsby portrays the wealthy, beautiful and well connected in New York, Small Apartments’ increasing body count and insane asylum adjacent to a bowling alley possess a touch of the surreal. The film also encompasses another end of the geographic and socioeconomic spectrum: upwardly immobile lowlifes in Los Angeles.

Small Apartments offers an overload of smells, sounds, and textures in its visual depictions. One gets that sense when watching the main character, Franklin Franklin. He’s an obese, pasty, 32-year-old who lives in a dingy apartment complex with his dog, survives on pickles with mustard and Moxie soda, and spends his days in his underwear, only occasionally complementing his ‘outfit’ with a wig for his bald head. He dreams of moving to Switzerland to play the alphorn, which he practices to the displeasure of his neighbors.

Subsequent shots depict the dreams of Franklin’s eccentric neighbors. Next door is Tommy Balls (Johnny Knoxville), a gothic punk rock-styling, philosophically inclined pothead who works in a shabby convenience store. Tommy sets and achieves at least one goal every day, ranging from building a ‘gravity bong’ to using six new words in a conversation and sleeping with a girl named Rocky (Rebel Wilson).

On the other side of Franklin’s apartment lives the elderly Mr. Allspice (James Caan), a lonely curmudgeon who has inhabited the complex since his wife died 13 years earlier. Despite Allspice’s pungent name, he often yells at Franklin for the stench that diffuses from his apartment. Allspice paints apocalyptic devil murals and eats Chinese take-out every day.

Across from Franklin is a young woman, Simone (Juno Temple), who wants to leave her mother and become a Las Vegas dancer. Simone sports oversized neon faux furs, stripper heels, and hair streaked with pink highlights.

Amidst their intriguing quirks and crowded living conditions, the characters remain miserable and noticeably poor. The film’s appeal to so many of the senses (taste, smell, sound, vision) is in part carried off by placing these characters close to one another, thus eliciting both empathy and revulsion from the audience.

Burt Walnut, a local county fire investigator, begins investigating the landlord’s death and in the line of questioning, soon meets up with Allspice and Tommy. Walnut, a contemporary Columbo, stands out for his ordinariness—his disheveled attire consists of a rumpled simple jacket, dark khakis, and a button-down shirt. Åkerlund invites the audience to relate to the middle-aged Walnut, who’s not speaking to his wife because she ha an affair with his cousin. Walnut is the only ‘normal’ character and he, as a stand-in for the audience, tries to make sense of the apartment building’s residents’ lives and the corpse, with its odd clues of a missing toe and a melted merkin.

Akerlund attempts to inspire empathy with these figures by showing their relatable dreams and goals. This proves challenging because the characters are so viscerally unnerving—another comparison to The Great Gatsby, whose characters are similarly hard to relate to, not only for character flaws, but also for over-obscene consumptive habits. But characters like Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan are individuals with believable motives and actions, even as they are placed in the over the top settings of the ‘roaring’ ‘20s.

Åkerlund’s characters, on the other hand, seem a bit more bizarre and fictional, as if they were placed in a Lady Gaga video, despite the film’s setting in L.A. today. The characters’ costumes are just as likely pulled from a wardrobe out of the ‘60s, ‘00s or the future. Their lifestyles, hygiene (or lack thereof), and quirks are frankly detestable: Åkerlund simultaneously dares and forces us to look at Simone’s bubblegum stripper outfits, Tommy’s garish vests, and Franklin’s undergarments. If The Great Gatsby is a peep through a keyhole at the dirty underbelly of extreme wealth from a bygone era, Small Apartments kicks the door down and lays bare a grotesque characterization of today’s urban lower middle class. While Åkerlund’s costumes and sets are as highly stylized as Luhrmann’s, Åkerlund employs them not only to show the economic status of his characters, but also to confront the audience with their existence.

Åkerlund is acutely aware of the voyeurism he elicits from his audience. Franklin often sits at his back window and watches Simone with his binoculars, reminiscent of the character L.B. Jefferies in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, who watches a ‘dancing girl’ with his binoculars for days on end. But while Jefferies ultimately becomes a hero and a savior, Franklin remains seemingly more of a pervert and freak. And Jeffries’ immobility is temporary and caused by a respectable context: an accident at a big-time photoshoot. Franklin remains a semi-shut-in, trapped at the opposite end of the socioeconomic ladder. The film’s power stems partly from Åkerlund’s explorations of the problems of isolation and community. Sometimes the film lays bare that these are social constructs, linked to status and income. And then sometimes it indulges in the American myths of merit, self-made individualism, and happy coincidences for those who deserve it.

This takes us to the heart of the film. Is Small Apartments an exercise in “mean cute?” Is it a formulaic “B” picture on an indie tip? Or is it a film that’s mainly about its many moments of artistry? It’s all of these, but mostly the third.

Some of the film’s charm and power, for example, come from its ability to create moments of both isolation and connection, independent of the film’s big turning points. Each character craves interaction. Allspice suddenly kills himself in a fit of pique after years spent living alone. His dissent emerges suddenly; scribbled on his dark-tinged paintings are “Fuck you” and “Fuck this.” Franklin’s peeps are invasive and wrongheaded, but not malicious. (The young women across his way who turn the tables are the more ruthless ones, lampooning him again with a written rejoinder, “P.E.R.V.”) Franklin reminisces on his time with Bernard, and Walnut returns to his wife in spite of her infidelity. Even Simone and Tommy, two of the most aggressively solitary characters, find comfort with each other and thoughts of their mothers when Tommy dies.

The necessity of social connection also frames another central issue in the film, namely the role that money plays in the pursuit of happiness. Franklin needs money to go to Switzerland, and Las Vegas represents to Simone the opportunity to acquire wealth and status. But what each character is searching for is actually the basic human need that Bernard describes as, “a place we can call home, where we are loved.” Indeed, the money that gets Franklin to Switzerland comes directly from the bond between him and Bernard. Simone does not just seek wealth, but also the company of different people including her best friend who plans to run away with her. Mr. Allspice and Burt Walnut share an intimate moment reminiscing over infidelities and forgiveness, and after Mr. Allspice’s suicide, Walnut respectfully honors his acquaintance’s memory.

Small Apartments’ come hither / stay back aesthetic makes it a good film to think about. If it strayed further from the Hollywood mode, would it be more successful? What are its strengths and weaknesses? The film’s blighted L.A. cityscape is populated with people of color, but its core is white. How would it affect the film’s humor if more of the motel residents, police force, and low-wage-economy workers were minorities? How much does the soundtrack, with its cloying pan-pipe-centric-indie tunes and more moving ‘70s white soul, play a role? What if the utopia of “bum fuck” Sweden and Switzerland were depicted as a wider sphere, and brought into relation with the surreal insane asylum and L.A.’s wealthy Hollywood Hills? Perhaps only Franklin’s Wizard of Oz dog-gone-bad might make the journey, but then the film might be more open.

Imagine Lynch’s Mulholland Drive as a model. For there’s something more here, mainly in the nocturnal drives and time-lapse images of sky. The film has depth. Perhaps most touching is the moment of intimacy between the two lonely older men, James Caan and Billy Crystal, as they reminisce about lost wives (the scene is a reenvisioning of The Last Tango in Paris’s conversation between Paul (Marlon Brando) and Marcel, his deceased wife’s other lover. Like Small Apartments, the men share a bittersweet connection and similar silk bathrobes and liquor).

Indeed, Small Apartments is an amalgam of desires and ambitions. It features a Canadian scriptwriter and Swedish film-maker, both with visions and hopes for America. These dreams and fantasies might best be played out in a Small Apartments 2. Franklin returns from Switzerland, with Heidi, some Eurovision song winners, and eco-tourist euro-trash in tow. He’s returned to bring his dog back to Switzerland.

Wealthy now, and feeling sentimental and melancholy, however, he finds his apartment building about to be razed, and decides it should be turned into a Berlin-style artist co-op. He fights City Hall with the additional goal of incorporating the mental institution and the bowling alley. He tries to enlist the Hollywood elite. While Franklin crosses the great divide between the one percent and the rest of us, his dog goes wandering in search of Simone. Both Franklin and the dog enlist Occupy. (Yes, the dog can do this. He has speaking powers in Small Apartments 1.)

Again, Åkerlund addresses the issue of urban isolation at the fringe of lower middle class society in a variety of garments worthy of a Lady Gaga video, ranging from character quirks to outrageous clothes and absurd plot elements. But the underlying lesson is meant to read as plain as one of Walnut’s suits, and as true today as it was in Gatsby’s time. At the film’s end, Walnut, like Nick Carraway, leaves the bizarre and spectacular realm of the characters he has been investigating. While driving home, he also drives home the point that happiness is not a state of mind, but of minds—minds interacting with and caring for each other, craving relationships even when they are complicated or risky, and recognizing that individuality and community, however eccentric, can thrive outside of an isolated consciousness or a small apartment.