How dry I ammmmmmmmm!

I recently took another look at this film after seeing it upon it original release back in 87. I feel the same way now as I did when intially seeing it. It
is a charming, affective portrait of weirdly noirish L.A. This is due partly from Scroeder and his cinematographer. Some of the scenes in the apartment take on an hallucinatory quality that transcends the subject the film purports to be exploring: drunkards. This is not an accurate portrait of drunkards living together but Barbet Schroeder's interpretation of Bukowski's winsome recollection of the life he lived with Jane Coons, who died of alcoholism. What we have in BF is an example of two major Hollywood stars attempting to play their "idea" of drunken behavior, a comment on alcoholism rather than an internalization of alcoholism. I didn't believe for a second that Faye Dunaway was drunk in any of her scenes. As a matter of fact, when she is walking across a city boulevard just affter having met Henry and is taking him to the convenient store, she is walking an absolute straight line....while wearing high heels(???????) That's drunk? And Mickey Rourke, a good actor when he underplays, here does an exquisite imitation of W.C. Fields on heavy meds.
If you want to see an unglamorous, gritty, chilling, and sober depiction of two alcoholics living together, check out Stacey Keach and Susan Tyrrell in "Fat City." There is nothing crowd-pleasing about these performances. They're dead-on. And do real drunks care to ingratiate themselves to the crowd watching?