It’s the summer of 2013 and spray cans rattle as Reefa (Tyler Dean Flores), an ambitious, 18-year-old graffiti artist, paints his signature symbol — an eye surrounded by flower petals — illegally on a wall in his suburban Miami neighborhood. Later his father (José Zúñiga) a Colombian immigrant nervously awaiting the arrival of the family’s green cards, discovers it, and forces Reefa to whitewash over it before the authorities arrive. Prickling with adolescent resentment, the young man does so, and inadvertently supplies Jessica Kavana Dornbusch’s true-story biopic with an unfortunate parallel: “Reefa,” based on an enraging, heartbreaking real-life event, paints over the colors, creativity and chaos of its true-life tragedy with layers of film-convention formula.
Reefa is a good-looking skateboarder, cocksure about his artistic talent and eager to break into Miami’s tagging scene prior to moving to New York — the erstwhile home of his heroes Basquiat, Warhol and Haring — to attend art school.
Reefa is a good-looking skateboarder, cocksure about his artistic talent and eager to break into Miami’s tagging scene prior to moving to New York — the erstwhile home of his heroes Basquiat, Warhol and Haring — to attend art school.
- 4/15/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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