From the outside, “The Hottest State,” is yet another coming-of-age tale from a heartbroken, self-centered male with all the woe-is-me navel gazing you might expect from a center of the universe 20-something.
Yet, while baring all these clichés and characteristics initially, Ethan Hawke’s sophomore feature-length directorial effort based on his debut 1997 novel, slowly evolves into a very real and very affecting bittersweet memoir (though some are going to naturally find it self-involved and whiny and some degree, we suppose it can be at times).
Mark Weber plays the Hawke surrogate saddled with some serious father issues, now that the “Reality Bites” star has started to gray and beginning to encroach on his ‘40s (we figured he was 40 by now) . While the early accusations against Hawke’s novel were barbs of pretentiousness, “The Hottest State” film accurately captures the 20-something sense of crushed affections and unrequited love; and how these all-consuming emotional debilitations can knock our lives off track – at least temporarily.
Catalina Sandino Moreno plays the ambitious, aloof and out-of-reach object of Weber’s affection (a hipster Mexican singer/songwriter) and Michelle Williams (looking ever so lovely) plays Weber’s ex, willing to throw herself at him if any opportunity arises.
Much has been made about “The Hottest State” soundtrack all the hipster indie-rock bands (Bright Eyes, Cat Power, Feist) that contributed covers to the film’s score – written by the film’s principal songwriter and composer, Jesse Harris (the songwriter behind Nora Jones’ multiple Grammy award-winning debut album), but it’s Harris and the lesser known songs by Argentinean newcomer Rocha (lip-synced in the film by Moreno) that truly act as the film’s musical backbone (the Willie Nelson cover is also prominently featured, but try spotting your indie-faves and you might have a difficult time).
Harris (who has a small role as, what else, a singer/songwriter) wrote about “Morning in a Strange City (Cafe)” – the score piece that acts as the film’s main theme and plays numerous times throughout. It has a nice, melancholy, half-defeated, half I’m-not-giving-up feel to it with accordians, marimbas trumpets and earthy Latin textures. “That melody is a theme that runs through the entire sequence of the film that takes place in Mexico,” he said. “We did five different versions of the melody, and this is the mellow version where they’re having dinner in a restaurant, drinking tequila, and then the trumpet comes in when they go to the bathroom together.”
Longtime friends, Harris and Hawke didn’t have much of a problem coming up with a direction for the soundtrack.
“The more we talked about it, the more we thought it would be cool to score the film with different singers doing my songs,” Harris said. “Beyond that, I would sing my own tunes as a character in the film, write the songs for the character Sarah to sing and compose the instrumental score. Everything would be newly recorded for the movie.”
Eleven of the 18 songs on the soundtrack album originally appeared on one of Harris’ albums.
