Ask the Dust

Adapted from a novel by John Fante, Robert Towne's Ask the Dust stars Colin Farrell as Arturo Bandini, a young writer who comes to Los Angeles during the Great Depression in order to write a novel. As the film opens, he is down to his last nickel and decides to spend it on coffee in a diner. He is ...more

The biggest accomplishment of Robert Towne's adaptation of John Fante's Ask the Dust is that it will make anyone who sees it want to read the book. The film threads numerous layers of symbolism into the relationship between young Italian writer Arturo Bandini (Colin Farrell) and the Mexican waitress Camilla (Salma Hayek). There are questions of race, and what it means to be an American, and what it means to be in Los Angeles (a question that Towne has addressed often in his career), and how a ...more