AMERICAN PERFEKT, as in, far from it, both for the wacked-up USof and this spaced-out 1997 indie road trip thriller, both satisfying and frustrating. Established big league director Irwin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back, Never Say Never Again) mentor produced this for English director Paul Chart in his feature debut; Chart also wrote the script. After managing to get screened at Cannes Film Festival in their Un Certain Regard section where twenty entries vy for international attention for their non-traditional storylines and out of the ordinary styles, it logged a few other festivals, then pretty much disappeared into TAFI territory: Try and Find It. Not a trace of any box office results are to be uncovered without help from Interpol, yet it has achieved a certain culty shelf life.

Victim of an apparent road rage incident that’s damaged her car while driving thru the Mojave Desert, ‘Sandra Thomas’ (Amanda Plummer) lucks out getting a lift from ‘Jake Nyman’ (Robert Forster), a handsome, dapper, soft-spoken psychiatrist. After an encounter with smamy trickster ‘Santini’ (David Thewlis), the guy who helped mess up her car (unintentionally, he insists), imperturbable Jake and ditzy Sandra go their separate ways (sort of) and the coin spin of fate then brings Jake together with ‘Alice’ (Fairuza Balk), Sandra’s wild child sister. Why are the local cops suddenly interested in any and all?

A recent re-watch of the maligned 1996 The Island Of Dr. Moreau left me once again impressed with the fab Fairuza Balk. Seeing that she and Moreau co-casualty Thewlis had quickly re-teamed for this perked my chase from typing to seeing, and handy YouTube provided the venue. Looking first at comments, they seemed split between admiration and animosity, but the presence of Forster in the cast, along with Paul Sorvino, joined the plus column on finding out whether the cheese down yet another rabbit hole would be tasty or rancid.

With a not disqualifying qualification, I liked it. Made just prior to his career resurrection with the superb Jackie Brown, this apparently was written with Forster, 55, in mind, and he’s in great form, persuasively tacking from calm and reassuring to unraveled and menacing. Consistently weird Plummer is never the first cup of tea I”d select, but she’s okay here (she was director Chard’s girlfriend at the time), Thewlis keeps you guessing and Sorvino seems to be enjoying every word like a bite of caviar. Balk is never less than arresting. There’s a subdued, suitably eerie score from Simon Burwell. The only quibble comes in the last act, when, stuck in its circle of accumulating contrivances, the script surrenders to pull out one of those how-could-anyone-be-so-dumb? moves that tosses the necessary suspension of disbelief out the window.

Shot in California around Palmdale and the Antelope Valley hamlet of Pearblossom With added quirk supplied (and not overdone) by Chris Sarandon, Joanna Gleason, Geoffrey Lewis, Rutanya Alda, Jay Patterson and Belinda Balasky. 100 minutes.