Curator Watchlist
A scruffy, funny, and surprisingly tender portrait of self-destruction, Barfly turns barroom drift into a character study with real bite. Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway give it a bruised, lived-in chemistry that keeps the film from feeling merely boozy or literary.
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 1h 40m
Director: Barbet Schroeder
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige
Downtrodden writer Henry and distressed goddess Wanda aren't exactly husband and wife: they're wedded to their bar stools. But, they like each other's company—and Barfly captures their giddy, gin-soaked attempts to make a go of life on the skids.
Barbet Schroeder
Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige
A scruffy, funny, and surprisingly tender portrait of self-destruction, Barfly turns barroom drift into a character study with real bite. Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway give it a bruised, lived-in chemistry that keeps the film from feeling merely boozy or literary.
Barfly is less a plot than a hangover with a pulse. It follows Henry Chinaski and Wanda through bars, cheap rooms, and the small rituals of surviving one more night, but the film’s real subject is the strange dignity people invent when they’ve run out of better options. It can be crude, funny, and self-mythologizing, yet it never loses sight of the damage underneath the swagger.
Mickey Rourke plays Henry as a soft-spoken bruiser with a comic timing that keeps the character from collapsing into pure pose. Faye Dunaway is the film’s emotional engine, bringing volatility, need, and exhaustion to Wanda without sanding off her edges. Their chemistry gives the movie its pulse: not romantic idealization, but two damaged people recognizing themselves in each other.
Barbet Schroeder shoots the margins with an eye for texture rather than pity, and Robby Müller’s cinematography makes the decay look oddly alive. The result is a film that feels both ragged and controlled, a barroom screwball comedy with a hangover and a conscience. It’s not for everyone, but for the right viewer it’s a sharp, melancholy pleasure.
Patrick Pryor (5★) · 229 likes
Things I noticed after peeping this gem on the big screen: The ink stain on Hank Chinaski's shirt pocket. The way, well, BARFLIES wince and scuttle from daylight like cockroaches in a crumby linen closet. The sunglasses and slicked back hair of a paramedic who doesn't give a fuck. Wanda's look of despair when she realizes her cooked drunk-stolen corn is green and not worth chowing. My surprise seeing Robby Muller listed as cinematographer. Still, Barfly contains one of the… more
CinemaVoid 🏴☠️ (2.5★) · 185 likes
Mickey Rourke, the Brando who wanted but couldn't.
Mike D'Angelo (4.5★) · 137 likes
84/100 [originally written on my blog] Foolishly dismissed this at the time as an overly romanticized self-portrait, and then somehow managed to further misremember it as grim and serious, so imagine my surprise to find that it's actually the flophouse version of a screwball comedy. Rourke's Chinaski may only vaguely resemble Bukowski, but it's a gloriously daffy performance (albeit inadvertently poignant now in the way its foreshadows his own dissolution); he adapts his soft-spoken sleepy boy shtick into an air… more
Steve Moyle (4★) · 110 likes
“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.” "It's hatred. It's the only thing that lasts." "Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth." Based on poet/novelist Charles Bukowski - Barbet Schroeder's Barfly is brilliantly written and has two impressive performances from Mickey Rourke (Henry) and Faye Dunaway (Wanda) as two believable alcoholics who are always interesting throughout. Robby Muller's cinematography… more
Kylo (3.5★) · 100 likes
“When I drink, I move in the wrong direction” — Faye Dunaway giving Gena Rowlands vibes in A Woman Under the Influence. “Somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something” — Henry seemed pretty reasonable, to be honest. Henry seemed like a nice guy, and things just gravitated toward him. Maybe I need to spend more daylight hours at the bar. I wouldn’t want to mess with Sylvester Stallone’s brother, though.
Another Bukowski-adjacent drifter story, but more openly about dead-end labor, booze, and the bored rhythm of survival.
A devastating companion piece for viewers interested in alcoholism as tragic romance and self-erasure.
Shares the same profane, humane interest in men adrift and the comedy that survives in bleak circumstances.
For a similarly bruised antihero and a world where charm, damage, and self-sabotage are inseparable.
Another classic of restless masculinity, alienation, and the refusal to fit into ordinary life.
A low-key, bar-centered portrait of drift, regret, and deadpan melancholy.
For a raw, street-level look at addiction and doomed intimacy without sentimental cushioning.
A fierce study of emotional instability and domestic strain, with a similar sense of human volatility.
If the appeal is aimless urban wandering and mood over plot, this is a strong fit.
Shares the offbeat Los Angeles grime and deadpan absurdity, though in a more punk, surreal register.
A sad, sun-bleached portrait of delusion, disappointment, and male drift.
For viewers who like laconic outsiders, shabby spaces, and a comic sense of resignation.
alcoholism, self-destruction, antihero romance, working-class drift, Los Angeles underbelly, creative frustration, loneliness, dark comedy
drama, romance, dark comedy, character study, alcoholism, Los Angeles, misanthropy, bohemian, 1980s, gritty