Robert Towne revisits 1930s Los Angeles, the setting of his masterful screenplay for Chinatown, for this adaptation of John Fante's Depression-era novel. Towne directs Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek as two lost souls adrift in the city, each chasing their own version of the American Dream. She's a Mexican immigrant yearning for a white knight to whisk her into a refined world of dinner parties and high-heeled shoes, while Farrell is miscast as a virginal Italian-American writer who pictures success as a prize-winning novel under one arm and a blue-eyed blonde on the other. Nevertheless, they're stuck with each other for a romance that's intended to be slow-burning, but is actually played out in exasperating fits and starts. Despite a natty voiceover, there's little access to the inner life of Farrell's tortured scribe and the action feels stagebound. Ultimately, it's dry as dust.

Mexican beauty Camilla hopes to rise above her station by marrying a wealthy American. That is complicated by meeting Arturo Bandini, a first-generation Italian hoping to land a writing career and a blue-eyed blonde on his arm.