City Island
It's said that people choose to believe lies not because they need to, but because they want to. The Rizzo clan seems to require lying the way normal people require air to breathe. The only truth between them is that they'll say anything to avoid an honest conversation. The family patriarch is Vince Rizzo(Andy Garcia), a corrections officer with a secret dream to become an actor in the mold of Marlon Brando. He tells the family he's playing poker when he's really off getting acting lessons His wife Joyce(Juliana Marguiles), a spitfire of a woman, doesn't believe a word of it. She thinks he's cheating behind her back. Their daughter, Vivian, the supposed pride of the family should be away at college. Instead she's stripping for tips at the local club. Their wisecracking son, Vinnie, has a fetish for obese chicks. They fall vent through machine gun insults and accusations that drive them further apart.
The entire family seems to be holding their secrets in out of some sense of personal shame, and they might've all proceeded happily along in their ignorance until the biggest secret of all comes crashing down upon Vince. He meets a prisoner who might just turn out to be his son from a former lover. When Vince agrees to house Tony(Steven Strait) for the remainder of his sentence, it throws off the family dynamic to the point where everybody's lies start to collide with one another.
Writer/Director Raymond De Felitta has been working on City Island for a long time, and it shows. It's one of those quirky indie flicks that would've been a huge sleeper hit ten years ago, back when Miramax was crankin' them out every other week. Fortunately, I happen to love those movies. The script bounces along at a sitcom pace, with each family member getting their moment to shine. Andy Garcia shows the charm and strength that made him a star and which he hasn't shown in a long time. While the comic moments between the family mostly work, it's when the story slows down and these characters lower their shields that it really excels. In particular, every scene between Vince and his sexy classmate, Molly(Emily Mortimer) hits on a number of levels. She's holding a crushing secret of her own, one that binds her to Vince, but at the same time she's emotionally truthful with him in a way that Joyce never could be. I found myself hoping he'd ditch Joyce for her. Whether he does or not I'll leave up in the air.
I went in to City Island expecting to hate it. It looked outdated, and the performances way over the top with Italian-American stereotypes. But I was wrong. Their ethnicity and the pride the Rizzos take in their little corner of New York is one of the film's strengths. The constant bickering might turn off some, and frankly their secrecy reached maddening levels even for me, but this is one ensemble performance that completely won me over with it's insightful humor and dare I say it, honesty.
I Am Love
I Am Love might have the best trailer of the year. Watch it for yourself. It's ninety seconds of pure sensory overload, from the food to the vibrant cityscapes of Milan, it's just scrumptious. Luca Guadagnino's film taps into this same energy for brief bursts, but becomes bogged down in familial politics that threatens to overload the sleep centers of my brain more than anything else.
Tilda Swinton stars as Emma Rechi, the Russian wife of an Italian heir to a lucrative textile business. Their family are all confident and successful. When her son, Edo, introduces her to his best friend Antonio, a gourmet chef, she finds herself infatuated with him. Increasingly bored with her stale marriage and missing the discovery and mystery of her first days in Italy, she ventures into a passionate relationship with Antonio that stimulates her in a way she hasn't been in years.
I Am Love is a visual feast for the eyes, thanks to the gorgeous cinematography of Yorick Le Saux. Every shot is sweeping and grand, it's like everybody and everything in Milan has been coated in a fine golden sheen. We're being literally taken on an exquisitite sensual journey so complete in some scenes that you can practically taste the gourmet food right along with Emma. I won't even touch how the torrid 5-minute sex scene made me feel!
Guadaligno knows how to construct an imaginative, absorbing scene. The script is where his talents fail him. For all this film's emotional heft, the story is dull and lifeless. Other than Tilda Swinton, speaking Italian with the perfectly broken inflection of a Russian transplant, the rest of the actors and their characters have no personality whatsoever. Their stories are barely blips on the radar, short and somewhat pretentious. Ultimately it's only Emma's story that matters, the rest is just background noise. I Am Love needs to be experienced, but those expecting more than lush visuals will walk away disappointed.
