FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
Directed by: Alan Taylor. Produced by: Ruth Charny, Lianne Halfon, Russell Smith, John Malkovich, Gary Winick & Alexis Alexanian. Written by: Daniel Handler, based on the novel by Joel Rose. Director of Photography: Harlan Bosmajian. Edited by: Malcolm Jamieson. Music by: Michel Delory & Anna Domino. Released by: IFC. Country of Origin: USA. 85 min. Not Rated. With: David Krumholtz, Clara Bellar, Paul Calderon, Jon Budinoff, Cliff Gorman, Damien Young & Heather Burns.
When Joe (David Krumholtz) moves to what used to be his grandparents'
neighborhood, New York's Lower East Side, he realizes things have changed. And
since the realization comes sometime between fending off crackheads in the
basement and having to steal water pipes from a hospital, it seems to have come
a little too late.
Soon after moving in with his French wife and their baby, Joe becomes president
of "the corporation," what the residents of this "semi-legal tenement" have
named their administrative meetings held in the tiny basement. Although focused
on Joe, director Alan Taylor seems more interested in the mottled collection of
residents. This brief film spends over half its running time introducing us to
the drag queens, the artists, the hookers, and all the other
'80s downtown stereotypes that Rent jovially introduced to our lexicon.
In Rent, the checklist of these stereotypes and their predictable story
lines are played for wide-eyed optimism and amusement, but here their use is
neither new nor pliable to this film's weightiness.
But it's unwelcome resident Carlos DeJesus (Paul Calderon) and his son that should
be the stars of the film. Having lived in the building before any of the
corporation, Carlos refuses to pay them rent. He is the sole reason the
homeless and the drug addicts stay away from their quasi-legal apartments,
though the other residents believe that this is their own doing and want him
out - so much so that one of them sets fire to his apartment, providing a
central story line which finally begins after the long exposition.
The actors are all individually excellent, but they clash together - some are
one-note funny, some are 3D serious characterizations (the pivotal scenes
between Carlos and Joe feel awkward rather than dramatic with Calderon playing
Carlos with brute gravity and Krumholtz playing Joe for laughs as a
nebbish).
What Taylor does give us is a dynamic portrayal of gentrification. As the
residents transform their building into a co-op, we see scenes that show the
desire to move up in the world. Scenes like one in which the corporation feels
they have a right to steal water pipes from a nearby "new f-----' co-op" are
the meat and gristle of the film. As the tenants' scorn grows for Carlos and
the homeless, their disdain for the bourgeoisie begins to dwindle. It's a
surprisingly critical sentiment centering an otherwise middle-of-the-road film,
whose title fittingly derives from a song by the Dead Kennedys. Zachary Jones
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