By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
May 06, 1988
One day in the Mojave desert, a heavily dressed German woman tramps through the searing heat. She's Jasmin, a beyond-zaftig Bavarian who casts a big shadow at sundown. Marooned somewhere between Vegas and Disneyland after a domestic spat, she's about to check in at Bagdad Gas and Oil, a dilapidated pit stop for Percy Adlon's spry, wry comedy "Bagdad Cafe."
Part cafe, part motel -- but mostly existential tethering post for the terminally weird -- this out-of-the-way place is run by cranky Brenda (CCH Pounder). Shackled by poverty, a layabout husband, piano-player son, Walkman-eared daughter and a crying baby, she rails at everyone -- Jasmin (Marianne Sagebrecht) included. How the two women (obvious opposites) fare with each other, as Jasmin gradually wins over Brenda's children and the Bagdad community, is Adlon's main strain -- and a strain it can be occasionally, thanks to CCH Pounder's irritatingly irritable performance and Adlon's corny sisterhood ending. But in Adlon's brand of camp, these weaknesses, intended or not, don't really matter: Just about anything goes.
Like the coffee machine. Which never works. It's operated by Indian short-order cook Cahuenga (George Aquilar), who seems content to idle in the dusty, dark coffee saloon waiting for something to happen. And in this post-cowboy western, little does; at least, at first. The only wandering varmints are truckers stopping in for gas or coffee. The only cowboy knocking around is Jack Palance as Rudi Cox, a former Hollywood set painter with a peaceful, twisted smile who does his own canvases now. Local sheriff Arnie (Apesanahkwat) is actually a genial Indian with braids. And laconic tattoo lady/motel guest Debby (Christine Kaufmann) is later to leave in disgust because there's "too much harmony."
Debby is referring to the transformation that takes place when Jasmin's compulsive cleanliness, winning ways and a peculiar talent for magic tricks slake Brenda's animosity and turn the Bagdad Cafe into an entertainment house for desert locals. Adlon's jaundiced-in-America mood (emphasized by Bernd Heinl's topsy-turvy camera angles) at first is in keeping with Jim ("Stranger Than Paradise") Jarmusch and the Coen brothers ("Blood Simple"). But when Jasmin turns things around, "Bagdad" gets closer to the zany romanticism of Tom Robbins' novel "Another Roadside Attraction," wherein offbeat characters successfully seek romantic fulfillment in a Winnebago-turned-roadside-diner.
The Adlon-Sa gebrecht collaboration is an encore from the 1983 "Sugarbaby" (its German title, "Zuckerbaby," sounds even better), in which Sa gebrecht plays a beyond-Rubenesque mortician who courts a skinny train driver and wins him through tenacity over trimness. She'll do the same to you in "Bagdad."
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