Tollbooth

All you have to do to be some creature’s god, is to disappear. Doris’ father has disappeared. He should have arrived on her birthday, but he never turned up. The years go by and Doris turns twenty. She works at a petrol station, but she is still waiting for daddy to come home. Jack, the tollbooth man, has promised her to keep a look-out for him. He dreams of marrying Doris and become a policeman, like Don Johnson in Miami Vice.

In the meantime Doris sleeps with Dash, the guy in the fishmonger’s shop who jumps around with his leg in plaster, waiting for something to happen so that he can finish writing his novel.

One dark night Doris’ dad comes back and dies by accident in Jack’s arms. Dash is more than helpful when it comes to getting rid of the body. But how is Jack going to tell Doris that her dad will never come back?

Fairuza Balk from Gas Food Lodging plays a different kind of blonde in this roadmovie without driving, reminiscent of both Twin Peaks and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Lenny van Dohlen, who plays Jack, her gentle knight, is recognizable as the man with the orchids in Twin Peaks.

Tollbooth is a black comedy about a stretch of American highway where absolutely nothing happens – if you don’t count the tollbooth wangler with mob connections, the taxi driver who collects run over animals, and the human corpses which are slipped into Dash’s fish equipment store and end up as bait. –Stockholm International Film Festival