Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
8/16/10
Because they simultaneously
demand full disclosure and offer absolute judgment, families are hothouses
for the care and nurturing of secrets. That also makes them prime
settings for indie dramedies like City Island, which is all about
the way every member of a New York family hides something significant about
themselves from the rest. While Raymond De Felitta's film is never
quite as clever as it wishes and contains one seriously misjudged subplot,
it's filled with good performances and high spirits, and is the kind of
movie most people drawn to indie comedies genuinely enjoy.
Prison Guard Vince Rizzo
(Andy Garcia) claims he's got a weekly card game so his wife Joyce (Julianna
Margulies) doesn't know the truth: he's taking an acting class under
the instruction of Michael Malakov (Alan Arkin). There, he's assigned,
along with partner Molly (Emily Mortimer) to create a monologue about his
deepest, darkest secret. Perhaps he might choose the secret of Tony
Nardella (Steven Strait), his son through a long-ended relationship who
turns up in jail. Tony only needs someone to take him in to get early
release, and the guilt-ridden Vince does so without telling the kid or
his family the secret, instead insisting that he's hired him as a live-in
carpenter. Tony finds nothing but secrets sweltering under the Rizzo
roof: Joyce hasn't really quit smoking, daughter Vivian (Dominik
Garcia-Londo) isn't really attending school and son Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller)
is an online porn addict of sorts whose favorite webmistress just happens
to live across the street. Molly hooks Vince up with an audition
for a Martin Scorsese movie that goes surprisingly well. But if Vince's
dream of becoming an actor becomes real, can his family survive the resulting
cascade of revelations?
City Island is about
two kinds of secrets, the kind like Vivian working as a stripper after
getting kicked out of school and Vince's having a son with another woman
that could actually damage a family, and ones like the acting class and
the smoking that real people tend to keep more often but play here as contrivances
of De Felitta's screenplay. But what he does best is get his cast
(with the key exception of one story wing we'll get into in a moment) to
play it all as honestly as could be imagined. This is, in fact, as
lived-in and real as I've ever seen Garcia, whose work as Vince reminded
me of Sylvester Stallone's best Rocky performances: I really felt
like I could run into this guy on the street. Margulies is playing
an oversized type, but infuses her with spontaneity one doesn't always
get from her. And I felt like the confusion and defensive anger of
both Strait and Garcia-Lando (Andy's real-life daughter) were coming from
someplace sincere.
As a movie buff and local
theater wannabe, I found the thread about Vince's acting ambitions the
movie's most interesting. I liked the fact that Malakov seems to
be teaching a really bad acting class, and the way Vince's natural talent
shines through once he gets the chance to work with some real pros is a
delight to watch (the movie audition scene is gold). While Mortimer's
performance feels more like part of a movie than those around her, Molly
is an intriguing character, particularly when we finally learn her deep,
dark secret. The climactic deluge of revelations is cleverly mounted
by all involved.
My biggest problem with City
Island is the subplot about Vince Jr. Whether it should be so
or not, De Felitta is biting off some very R-rated subject matter in his
story about the kid learning from the woman across the street to understand
and act on his Eater/Feeder fetish, and to squeeze it into a PG-13 format
instead has to tame it down to the tale of a kid who just likes to watch
fat people eat. Stripped of all context (Vince Jr.'s is the one secret
that never “comes out” during the climax, although a final shot shows his
new friends incorporated into the Rizzo's extended family), these scenes
just lay there flat as an empty balloon. It's tricky, potentially
intriguing stuff dumbed down to an unwatchable degree, the surreal image
of an unfamiliar fetish presented in code to the point where I'd barely
understand what was being said had an episode of TV's Bones not
discussed this with me in more explicit terms. I can't pin down the
name of the actress in question, but we're looking at an image of sexualized
obesity that brings to mind the African Americans in Gone With the Wind
a lot more than what De Felitta must have been going for.
City Island is a diverting
trifle of the sort people enjoy catching on TV on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
It puts committed performances to work in the service of a thin but complicated
story and keeps the plates spinning just well enough to leave you feeling
like you've just seen something. Even when you don't know what the
hell it is. |
