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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
PRINCE OF BROADWAY New York City’s garment district has historically attracted striving immigrants. Prince of Broadway sympathetically shows that even when they are now reduced to hawking fashion knock-offs, their American Dream is still genuine. A young street hustler, Lucky (Prince Adu) charmingly coaxes customers out of the winter cold into the back room of a store marked “wholesale only,” where they can buy fake brand-name sneakers and clothes. (He touts his wares as having been made by “professional designers from the School of Broadway.”) An illegal immigrant from Ghana, he works on commission from the store’s owner, Levon (Karren Karagulian), an older Armenian-Lebanese immigrant. Just as writer/director Sean Baker’s debut feature Take Out was so realistic that I was afraid I’d glimpse acquaintances among that film’s stingy tippers, this storefront is so much like the ones that I walked by when I worked just blocks away that I expected to see people I know lured in for the bargain-priced purses. Away from the store, Lucky scrapes by in a spare space shared with other illegals. In contrast, Levon, in his upscale apartment, deals with a restless and much younger immigrant wife, who only wants to go clubbing. When Lucky’s teenage ex-girlfriend, Linda (Kat Sanchez), unexpectedly shows up, she announces he’s the father of her baby boy and insists he take care of him for a couple of weeks—and flees without even telling him the kid’s name. Though the film slowly unfolds in a vérité style similar to the Dardenne Brothers’ L’Enfant (also about a new, though irresponsible, father), Lucky struggles with what he thinks is a temporary assignment, despite suspicions about his paternity. When Lucky brings the toddler to work, he and Levon are alternatively entranced and frustrated by the baby’s intrusion in their work, climaxing when they have to dodge the counterfeit police squad. There are many cute scenes of Lucky gradually learning to care for the irresistible kid’s meals, hygiene, and health. The baby gets upgraded from sleeping in a box to a stroller and sports child-size fake designer sneakers (and eventually has a name), but this film is no knock-off of the silly 1980’s 3 Men and a Baby. What makes this film a less sentimental heartwarming tale is its sensitivity to how all of the characters intersect within Levon’s store, and not just its focus on two ambitious men who open themselves to paternal feelings. The social and financial pressures on the women are gradually and sensitively revealed, with the editing emphasizing personal parallels in their search for freedom and fulfillment. Back uptown, the teenage mother is being evicted by her fed-up mother and threatened by her new jealous boyfriend, while Levon’s wife is frustrated that her family talked her into her green-card marriage. Much as
Ramin Bahrani’s much more somber Man Push Cart hinted at the rich
story behind an immigrant food vendor,
Prince of Broadway quietly roots for the hopes and dreams of
distinctive individuals in another corner of the underground economy who
manage to feel optimistic.
Nora Lee Mandel
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