STN Entertainment

'Star Maps'

Rated R

or anyone who has spent
some time in Hollywood, the
sight of roadside vendors
hawking guides to celebrity
addresses is as commonplace as
limousines and leather. Watch-
ing these merchants for a few
minutes, one can't help but won-

F

Richard Halprin is an
attorney I film critic.

Q

Q

ti

it

der how anybody could make a formation, came up with the
living from such a trivial pursuit. premise for his first directorial ef-
But what if this opportunistic fort, Star Maps.
At the center of the story is 18-
activity is really the front for a
year-old Carlos, a dreamer
more lucrative enter-
who has just moved from
prise, an enterprise that
M e vi ES his
grandparents' home in
caters to the covert
Mexico to rejoin his family in
needs of the seedy citizen-
ry of Hollywood? Filmmaker Los Angeles with hopes of be-
Miguel Arteta pondered this pos- coming a movie star.
Even by today's standards,
sibility during his daily drive
down Sunset Boulevard and, with Carlos' family is decidedly dys-
equal parts of fabrication and in- functional. His mother is a men-
tally ill recluse who is happiest
when perched a few feet away
from her bedside TV; his brother
is a pudgy, grinning simp that
revels in other's misfortune; and
his father, Pepe, is an arrogant,
aging Casanova on whom Carlos
desperately wants to rely for as-
sistance networking in the en-
tertainment industry.
Pepe is all too ready to oblige,
and puts Carlos to work selling
star maps on the boulevard and
sexual favors off of it. Carlos is
willing to endure the most dis-
tasteful of encounters if it means
that he might find someone to
help him with his career. Start-
ing off each rendezvous by ask-
ing, "Who do you want me to be?"
he is regularly disappointed to
learn that no one really cares and,
when he finds someone who
might, he discovers that his fa-
ther is the most bitter opportunist
of them all.
Cynical, satirical and ulti-
mately sad, Star Maps explores
the unglamorous side of Holly-
wood, the uglier aspects of fami-
ly rivalry and the vulnerabilities
of vanity.
Bolstered by poignant perfor-
mances and a frequently funny
screenplay, the film insightfully
pits the energy of naivete against
the anger of regret, and, with no
clear winners or losers, Star Maps
shows how easily people can be
misled.

112
0p.
4

Douglas Spain in Miguel Arteta's Star Maps.

— Richard Halprin

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