SUGAR
Written & Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck
Produced by Paul Mezey, Jamie Patricof & Jeremy Kip Walker
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
USA. 114 min. Rated R
With Algenis Pérez Soto, Rayniel Rufino, Andre Holland, Michael Gaston, Jaime Tirelli, José Rijo, Ellary Porterfield & Ann Whitney 
 

Set in one border town after another, Sugar begins at a baseball talent farm in the Dominican Republic, moves to a minor-league spring training facility in Arizona, and then to the modest home of an elderly Iowa couple—ardent supporters of the local farm team. Miguel “Sugar” Santos, played by newcomer Algenis Pérez Soto, is the eponymous main character, a poor but talented 19-year-old Dominican right-hander who masters the elusive “knuckle curve,” yet responds poorly to the league’s highly competitive environment and its constant changes of venue. Social mobility, it seems, moves too quickly for the kid.

In response, Sugar buses it across the country and lands in the ultimate border town of the Bronx, New York. Sophomore directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck envision the place as anything but the melting pot that’s usually depicted. Another film that comes to mind is John Sayles’ 1984 The Brother From Another Planet, which likewise describes New York City as a strangely multicultural but vastly impermanent place, where global cultures, to maintain some kind of identity, are truly differentiated. Sayles throws his lead, a space alien disguised as a shabbily dressed black man, into Harlem, and instead of accepting the warm welcome offered by his supposed peers, in the end, he finds the city, well, alienating. Newcomers, like both Sugar and Sayles’s protagonist, rarely experience a cultural stopping point. To the contrary, the immigrant experience is marked by the constant upheaval of values.

For such a thematic downer, Sugar’s Harlem sequence is surprisingly lighthearted. It’s a deliberate measure taken by Boden and Fleck—who changed the indie landscape in 2006 with their breakout debut Half Nelson. Again, they’ve structured a story around the daily struggle against social pressures and maintaining personal identity in a poor community. Rather than rely solely on the emotional response that such conflicts evoke for a socially conscious audience, there’s something much more complex involved. The film pays attention to universalities, but it’s not universal—Sugar Santos’ experiences are unique in their own right.

The directors are careful in steering Sugar toward surprising their film-literate audience. Every scene brings with it another unexpected turn, from the anticlimactic welcoming in the U.S., to the fall from grace, and eventually to a meeting with an ally in the form of a Puerto Rican carpenter. Sugar’s life is hectic (but what 19-year-old’s isn’t?) and the story’s turns are fascinating. In addition, the directors’ expressionistic tendencies pepper both of their films with a meticulous attention to detail and the hippest of pop music. It’s a high degree of taste and control from such young filmmakers.

The irony in the film’s ending is that at 19, Sugar is far from his own final destination, whether he realizes it or not. New York City has been the fabled starting point for millions of people, spanning hundreds of years, and this tale recognizes that fact. Everyone carves out a place in the world, say Boden and Fleck, and whether Sugar’s experiences fall under the multicultural blanket, they understand the importance of separating them from the too-often-sensationalized mix. Michael Lee
April 3, 2009