Hollywood groupies viewed with bleak precision

By Kevin Thomas
Los Angeles Times

•	'The Young Unknowns' Unrated (crude talk, violence, much substance abuse) 87 minutes

It is a harrowing film, anchored by a solid portrayal by young Devon Gummersall.

Gummersall's Charlie Fox is the 23-year-old son of a busy London-based commercials director who is on his third wife and fourth child. Charlie has maxed out his credit cards to make a "spec spot," with which he hopes to launch his own career. He proclaims himself a "happening" director to his girlfriend, Paloma (Arly Jover), a production coordinator, and wonders if that's the only reason she's with him.

He has reason to doubt. Paloma is a sophisticated Spanish beauty who would certainly not be the first lovely woman in Beverly Hills to hook up with the emotionally immature and not notably handsome son of a movie or TV big shot.

But the sympathetic way in which Paloma is presented suggests that, even though she's just about fed up with the obnoxious Charlie, she apparently actually has cared for him. It's the film's most serious drawback that Jelski never really establishes why Paloma would ever become involved with such a jerk, even if he does exhibit rare tender moments; perhaps he elicits maternal feelings in her.

His own mother is at the heart of Charlie's problems. An alcoholic who deserted the family when he was 12 and has moved on to many places and men, she is the one woman Charlie believes ever loved him, and he remains hurt and angry at her departure. He cannot, however, accept that he is but a gofer for his glibly manipulative father.

Charlie lives alone in his father's L.A. house, a slightly run down and under-furnished but expensive '60s residence that in fact was the estate of notorious Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and is equipped with 128 phone lines.

In the course of the film's 24 hours — or perhaps it's 36 — Charlie will be required to act like an adult for the first time in his life. When his crazed, misogynistic pal Joe (Eion Bailey) arrives ready to party with a blonde model, Cassandra (Leslie Bibb), Charlie's story begins in earnest.

Jelski is a skilled filmmaker, and her sense of reality is so uncompromising that, even when tempered by a touch of dark humor, her film is a grim, hard-to-take business. Many will understandably not see much point in sitting through "The Young Unknowns," but some will experience a surprisingly compelling sense of recognition in these people who seem dismally pathetic when they're not otherwise off-putting.

It is in fact possible to come away from the film with admiration for the degree of understanding and compassion Jelski has managed to bring to the characters, the self-deluding Charlie in particular.