In an industry where the term "road trip" has become synonymous with gross hijinks, Bart Freundlich's World Traveler serves as an elegant, inventive counterpoint.
The writer-director's follow-up to The Myth of Fingerprints, World Traveler is more compelling for the internal journey Billy Crudup charts than his literal cross-country jaunt.
With impressive performances from Crudup, co-star Julianne Moore and the rest of the supporting cast, plus Freundlich's keen sense of visual playfulness, World Traveler will satisfy audiences interested in an inward glimpse over explicit narrative.
For all the distance covered, the action is dreamily subdued and heavy on psychoanalytic symbolism, making this a road trip mainly for the art house instead of the "Animal House" crowd.
Crudup plays Cal, a New York architect living a seemingly idyllic life with his wife and young son. Cal abruptly abandons his family and hits the road in his deteriorating Volvo station wagon, seized by a discontent later described as a longing for some indefinable better life.
Fueled by well-chosen tunes from a master of the road song, Willie Nelson, World Traveler plays out in a series of uneasy encounters during Cal's westward wanderings.
Working briefly on a construction site, Cal befriends, and mildly corrupts, an alter-ego named Carl (Cleavant Derricks), makes unrewarding advances to Carl's wife (Mary McCormack) and engages in a dalliance with a waitress (Karen Allen).
On the road again, Cal shares a breezy ride with a spirited hitchhiker (Liane Balaban) and gets an ugly comeuppance from an old classmate (James LeGros) he runs into at an airport.
At one of his many pit stops in roadside taverns, Cal hooks up with Dulcie (Moore), a troubled woman to whom he's initially drawn out of a need to perform a good deed to salve his own downward-spiraling soul. With Dulcie, though, Cal is faced with obligations that exceed his capacity for being a good Samaritan, leaving him the same choice that began his trip — sticking things out or abandonment.
His ramblings end in Oregon, at the home of his father (David Keith), where Cal finds direction toward the "better life" he seeks.
The cast is exceptional, bringing a palpable sense of everyday authenticity to the characters. Crudup and Moore especially capture the air of world-weary travelers worn down by the mileage of life yet still plowing onward.
Punctuating the voyage are dreams both waking and sleeping in which Cal is haunted by a figure critical to his reclamation. In the film's surreal psychological climax, Freundlich artfully retraces Cal's trek in a fantasy flying sequence that zeroes in on a beautiful nighttime image of the World Trade Center ("World Traveler" was completed well before the terrorist attacks, and the movie was screening at the Toronto International Film Festival the morning of Sept. 11, as the trade center crumbled).
Seven months after their destruction, the trade towers bring a new feeling of wistful yearning and reflection that nicely serves the themes of "World Traveler."
There are no great revelations in the film. Its ambiguous ending makes Cal's desires clear while leaving it to viewers to decide if he'll fulfill his wishes. With "World Traveler," as in the best of treks, it's not the destination that's important, but the journey itself.
"World Traveler," released by ThinkFilm, is rated R for language and some sexuality. Running time: 104 minutes. Three stars (out of four).Copyright © 2002 AP