The air was thick and yellow
With the stale taste of decay.

— Welcome to L.A.

Los Angeles is used frequently as a symbol of hopelessness or despair. I think of it as an appropriate place for the end of the world thanks to Nanthanael West. Or I recall it as the stale setting for Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays, a story about the emptiness of existence in the movie-making world. Of course, I cannot disassociate L.A. from the detective novels of Raymond Chandler or the movie Chinatown — both depicting the City of Angels as a locus of American amorality. The Eagles on a recent album used the milieu as a metaphor for desolation row, and Tom Wolfe panned the metropolis on a TV documentary.

In his first film, Alan Rudolph (he wrote the screenplay for Buffalo Bill and the Indians) does little to erase this downbeat view of L.A. Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine) is featured as a rock lyricist who returns to his home after three years in London. He cranks out some material for rock star Eric Wood (Richard Baskin) who's cutting an album in a studio. The listless Barber enjoys the attention of his middle-aged agent (Viveca Lindfors), a sexually hungry middle-aged woman (Sally Kellerman), her maid (Sissy Spacek) who cleans house topless, a frustrated wife (Geraldine Chaplin) whose workaholic husband (Harvey Keitel) doesn't pay enough attention to her, and a freelance photographer (Laruen Hutton) who loves taking pictures of corners. These rootless individuals all crisscross each other's lives but to little good effect. Barber's rich father (Denver Pyle) wants to give his prodigal son love and money. Barber won't have either.

Director/writer Alan Rudolph borrows the free-form cinematic style of Robert Altman (who produced the film) to convey the joylessness of this tale — set ironically during the Christmas holidays. He structures it around the folk-jazz music of Richard Baskin. And that directorial mistake badly hobbles the overall mood of the movie since Baskin's music is trite and badly performed. The acting is occasionally top-notch, especially moments of Kellerman's vulnerable sensuality, Chaplin's psychic torment, and Keitel's confusion.

Welcome to L.A. presents another angle on the depressing mythos of the city — an environment where wealth doesn't bring happiness, movement has no meaning, and sex comes in many varieties but offers no fulfillment. These lonely people merely glide through their days since they can't dance to either faith or hope. And the greatest gift of all — love — is outside their experience.