Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
TREASURE OF THE INDIES, (My Cultural Landscape, George Heymont)
How many dysfunctional families have made it to the silver screen? Whether crafted as comedies or tragedies, films ranging from The Subject Was Roses to My Big Fat Greek Wedding to Meet the Fockers, from Mommie Dearest to Monster-in-Law to Dolores Claiborne, from Liar, Liar to Little Children to Flirting With Disaster usually contain enough bitter resentment, festering familial frustration and untapped bile to make it through 80 minutes with plenty of anger and tension to spare. A new entry, filmed in San Francisco, makes an impressive addition to the category of premarital trauma-drama that stems from "the family secret that will never die."
Daron Jennings is Mark Foster, a straight man who has been living with Erika (Lizzie Ross) for two years in a San Francisco flat near Twin Peaks. He wants to marry Erika (who is prone to panic attacks), but suffers from a fear of commitment and is paralyzed by a brutal family secret that he just can't bring himself to discuss. Mark's business executive brother, Hal (Josh Hutchinson) is an egotistical asshole married to Beth (Heather Mathieson), a manipulative and materialistic blonde bitch who may, in fact, be screwing one of their neighbors.
Want to guess who's coming to dinner?
None other than Gretchen (the superb Bettina Devin), a former stewardess with an enormous reservoir of frigid fake charm, an annoying habit of taking pictures with her digital flash camera, and the ability to reduce her two sons to bitterly feuding and hopelessly resentful children merely by crossing the California state border. Once married to a philandering pilot with a drinking problem, Gretchen's divorce caused a major scandal 15 years ago from which her sons have never really recovered. Mark has always sided with Gretchen and been protective of his mother. Hal has always sided with his deceased father while maintaining a bitter working truce with his control freak of a mother.
Written and directed by Jonn Bowden (and based on his three-act play, The Big Mouth), The Full Picture is an astonishingly well-written family drama with more than enough seething resentment to fill everyone's plate. The cast of mostly unknown actors does a stunning job of etching Mark's indecisiveness, Erika's insecurities, Hal's immaturity and Beth's duplicity with the delicate sting of paper cuts.
But it is Gretchen, the mother from hell, who is a real piece of work. Unlike the blowsy Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Gretchen doesn't take wild, drunken swings at people. Oh, no, not this gal. Although capable of feigning total innocence, Gretchen's years of offering service with a forced sincerity at 30,000 feet have taught her how to slice someone to shreds with surgical precision and then daintily dab her victim's open wounds with lemon juice.
It's easy to see how, having orginally written and staged this story as a play, Bowden has had plenty of time to get inside each character and exploit their strengths and weaknesses. If you're the kind of person who likes to keep score during family showdowns, you can start with three emasculating women, two sets of rapidly shriveling testicles, one wedding ring that was a family heirloom, God knows how many painful secrets, and a burnt roast. Who needs a partridge in a pear tree?
The Full Picture benefits immensely from Mark De Gli Antoni's wryly mischievious original musical score and Cliff Traiman's astonishingly rich cinematography. This is a film that is written with great insight, directed with a knowing eye, and acted by a gifted ensemble.
George Heymont
Daron Jennings is Mark Foster, a straight man who has been living with Erika (Lizzie Ross) for two years in a San Francisco flat near Twin Peaks. He wants to marry Erika (who is prone to panic attacks), but suffers from a fear of commitment and is paralyzed by a brutal family secret that he just can't bring himself to discuss. Mark's business executive brother, Hal (Josh Hutchinson) is an egotistical asshole married to Beth (Heather Mathieson), a manipulative and materialistic blonde bitch who may, in fact, be screwing one of their neighbors.
Want to guess who's coming to dinner?
None other than Gretchen (the superb Bettina Devin), a former stewardess with an enormous reservoir of frigid fake charm, an annoying habit of taking pictures with her digital flash camera, and the ability to reduce her two sons to bitterly feuding and hopelessly resentful children merely by crossing the California state border. Once married to a philandering pilot with a drinking problem, Gretchen's divorce caused a major scandal 15 years ago from which her sons have never really recovered. Mark has always sided with Gretchen and been protective of his mother. Hal has always sided with his deceased father while maintaining a bitter working truce with his control freak of a mother.
Written and directed by Jonn Bowden (and based on his three-act play, The Big Mouth), The Full Picture is an astonishingly well-written family drama with more than enough seething resentment to fill everyone's plate. The cast of mostly unknown actors does a stunning job of etching Mark's indecisiveness, Erika's insecurities, Hal's immaturity and Beth's duplicity with the delicate sting of paper cuts.
But it is Gretchen, the mother from hell, who is a real piece of work. Unlike the blowsy Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Gretchen doesn't take wild, drunken swings at people. Oh, no, not this gal. Although capable of feigning total innocence, Gretchen's years of offering service with a forced sincerity at 30,000 feet have taught her how to slice someone to shreds with surgical precision and then daintily dab her victim's open wounds with lemon juice.
It's easy to see how, having orginally written and staged this story as a play, Bowden has had plenty of time to get inside each character and exploit their strengths and weaknesses. If you're the kind of person who likes to keep score during family showdowns, you can start with three emasculating women, two sets of rapidly shriveling testicles, one wedding ring that was a family heirloom, God knows how many painful secrets, and a burnt roast. Who needs a partridge in a pear tree?
The Full Picture benefits immensely from Mark De Gli Antoni's wryly mischievious original musical score and Cliff Traiman's astonishingly rich cinematography. This is a film that is written with great insight, directed with a knowing eye, and acted by a gifted ensemble.
George Heymont
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