There's a very telling fire escape exchange between Amy-Jo (Elle Fanning) and Alain (Peter Dinklage), two of the many marginal characters who inhabit a Los Angeles hotel/apartment building in the film Low Down. The young woman points out that the music heard is being played by her father. "Is Joe your dad?" Alain asks. "Yeah," responds Amy-Jo, beaming. Alain says nothing, but the expression that appears on his already sad countenance is all too eloquent. There's the brief suggestion of a smile, but the lingering cast is knowing, rueful. "Poor thing," he might as well say. The 1970's Los Angeles of Low Down is pretty well circumscribed by the film's title. One half expects Charles Bukowski to wander into the frame or be sitting in one of the dives into which we're which we're occasionally taken. In that basin of almost indomitable brightness, what sunlight we see is indirect, often refracted through dirty windows...