The 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, presented by AT&T, runs April 15th-26th and features hundreds of features, documentaries, short films, and special events all throughout downtown New York City. The ArtsWire Weekly's three featured reviewers Mateo, Derek, & Chrisena are hitting the festival and bringing the reviews right to you! What you should see and what you should skip...
First of all, I don’t think an unluckier family was ever created on screen. This film begins by showing us a normal day in the life of the Kendall family. Between a son who is a drug addicted, has-been baseball star, who was recently dismissed from the marines and a daughter who has a mental disability with a boyfriend who doesn’t understand boundaries, this family has it all. Mother Elaine and father Ed are officially not sleeping in the same room, and tend to argue about everything. The youngest son is a “wanna-be” cop who is trying to help hold his family together but lacks the authority and respect to do so.
This jumble of issues is overwhelming, and honestly confusing. It took me way too long to decipher what the relationships were between all of the characters. After I had that all figured out, the next problem was that I didn’t know where to put my feelings. Should I be more worried about the son with the addiction, the daughter who is getting potentially sexually assaulted by her boyfriend, or the last son who tends to stare at his police reserve pistol a bit too long each night before bed?
After what seems an eternity, the film decides which issue boils over first. Then the really depressing stuff starts. In one excruciatingly painful, yet incredibly well-acted scene, Ed Kendall (played by Michael Harney) dresses son’s dead body in his marine blues and weeps the whole time. After the funeral, father and remaining son split some whisky and get into a very violent fist fight. Things continue to stay bad, and get worse and worse and worse.
Then with only about 25 minutes left, the film does a 180 and becomes a redeemingly charming film about a family coping. We discover that the daughter has not been the victim of sexual assault and she and Willie are brought together for the box factory’s Christmas dance. Elaine turns into a funny woman, cracking jokes with her dry humor, and Ed turns into a family man. It comes out of nowhere, and it happens all too late in the game.
Dad gives a monologue to daughter DD, about what ‘shock’ is. He goes on to explain that shock is what happens when a person gets put through too much pain. At some point shock hits, and that person can’t feel the anything anymore. That is sort of how I feel about this film. At some point, it was so much despair that I couldn’t feel the weight of it anymore. It lost its impact because there was simply too much sadness. The narrative arc stayed on the same depressing level for too long and left me feeling exhausted and in need of a hug.
VERDICT: SKIP IT
DIRECTED BY Mark Kemble STARRING Karen Allen, Michael Harney, Theo Rossi, Johnny Whitworth, Ashley Williams and Iris Gilad
Playing as part of The 2015 Tribeca International Film Festival. For tickets & schedules: http://www.tribecafilm.com
CHRISENA RICCI once went to a costume party dressed in an all black dress and black wig. No one there could guess who she was. So she shouted out, "I'm Christina Ricci, without the T or I and add an E!" Everyone stood there confused, she was annoyed, so she stormed off. She never returned to that apartment ever again. Which is fine, because she later realized she was at the wrong party. She now lives in New York City.