This film is a slow-build romance, a conversation based meander through life of two lost souls (Lucy Liu and Tenoch Huerta), both with confidants who have their own relations (Tamlyn Tomita and John Cothran respectively).
The performance from all four is strong. The elective affinities (not too unlike Goethe's novel of the same name) between the characters is strong.
Lucy Liu's character Susan is a film maker working on a film looking at subway suicides, that it turns out are driven by a personal tragedy. She needs to interview subway workers to find this out, but they as they are migrants, they are often refuse interviews.
However, in researching and interviewing these workers, she makes a friendship with a migrant window cleaner.
These two play a short cat and mouse game that becomes a friendship and then a short romance.
So a lot of the film is these two breaking down cultural barriers to make a connection.
However this character play is solidly weighted by both Lucy Liu having her sister (played by Tomita) as a confidant working through their parents relationship, especially her father, his secret relationship after their mother died, and her father's later suicide.
Whereas Tenoch's confidant Phil, played by John Cothran is his maudlin but wise New Yorker who has cleaned windows all his life.
There is a gentleness to this film that reminds me of the French film 38 Shots of Rum, a film about French-Africans and a father-daughter relationship that also involves a railway suicide, that again despite that tragedy is an incredibly sweet (doux) conversational-style relationship film (the relationships don't work out in this film either ,and are also about lostness, alienation and anomies as well as dislocation).
I will say this film ticks a lot of boxes for me personally, despite being British, born in London, there was a lot in my life I can relate to.
I have volunteered as a mental health worker and lost three people to suicide, so this was a cathartic film for me.
I also have a good friend who is a Rwandan refugee who survived the genocide there. We became firm friends (still are) and before we both got married later in life, back in 2000 we spent a lot of time wondering around Brighton in the UK together, trying to piece our own separate lives together, whilst wondering around chatting about our own histories (currently trying to write my own screenplay about this experience). Tenoch's character reminded me a lot of my friend, although I was a John Cochrane friend for him instead, him telling me about his struggles relating to English women.
I am from a shopfitting background, but my Granddad was a scaffolder, so there is a link with being high up buildings there of a sort. Although my own father was absent, i was raised with a lot of woman around me, and strangely my own younger sister works in editing and workflow in the film industry.
And having worked both for my dad in the shopfitting industry from the age of 16, mostly as a labourer, but also as a cab driver in three UK cities, I found the male character's very relatable.
And then there is Lucy Liu herself, who in this comes across as a character or person who can create space for you to feel, a break from all that everyday stuff we repress.
I am currently separated from my wife of 15 years and kids, and of all things this film released was a good cry about missing my 14 year old son, currently training to be a blacksmith. That though was to do with Tenoch's character's desire to 'go and sort his life out back home'.
So ultimately whilst the main character performance is solid, credit must also go to Ricardo Benet for weaving this story together, creating the mis-en-scene's that set up a well constructed narrative underpinning, that still portrays a lostness at home, rather than abroad (at least for Lucy's character) in Lost In Translation, using cuts from scene to scene, as well as often panoramic views of New York localities, followed by intimate conversations.
Anyway, I guess it goes without saying, highly recommended!
The performance from all four is strong. The elective affinities (not too unlike Goethe's novel of the same name) between the characters is strong.
Lucy Liu's character Susan is a film maker working on a film looking at subway suicides, that it turns out are driven by a personal tragedy. She needs to interview subway workers to find this out, but they as they are migrants, they are often refuse interviews.
However, in researching and interviewing these workers, she makes a friendship with a migrant window cleaner.
These two play a short cat and mouse game that becomes a friendship and then a short romance.
So a lot of the film is these two breaking down cultural barriers to make a connection.
However this character play is solidly weighted by both Lucy Liu having her sister (played by Tomita) as a confidant working through their parents relationship, especially her father, his secret relationship after their mother died, and her father's later suicide.
Whereas Tenoch's confidant Phil, played by John Cothran is his maudlin but wise New Yorker who has cleaned windows all his life.
There is a gentleness to this film that reminds me of the French film 38 Shots of Rum, a film about French-Africans and a father-daughter relationship that also involves a railway suicide, that again despite that tragedy is an incredibly sweet (doux) conversational-style relationship film (the relationships don't work out in this film either ,and are also about lostness, alienation and anomies as well as dislocation).
I will say this film ticks a lot of boxes for me personally, despite being British, born in London, there was a lot in my life I can relate to.
I have volunteered as a mental health worker and lost three people to suicide, so this was a cathartic film for me.
I also have a good friend who is a Rwandan refugee who survived the genocide there. We became firm friends (still are) and before we both got married later in life, back in 2000 we spent a lot of time wondering around Brighton in the UK together, trying to piece our own separate lives together, whilst wondering around chatting about our own histories (currently trying to write my own screenplay about this experience). Tenoch's character reminded me a lot of my friend, although I was a John Cochrane friend for him instead, him telling me about his struggles relating to English women.
I am from a shopfitting background, but my Granddad was a scaffolder, so there is a link with being high up buildings there of a sort. Although my own father was absent, i was raised with a lot of woman around me, and strangely my own younger sister works in editing and workflow in the film industry.
And having worked both for my dad in the shopfitting industry from the age of 16, mostly as a labourer, but also as a cab driver in three UK cities, I found the male character's very relatable.
And then there is Lucy Liu herself, who in this comes across as a character or person who can create space for you to feel, a break from all that everyday stuff we repress.
I am currently separated from my wife of 15 years and kids, and of all things this film released was a good cry about missing my 14 year old son, currently training to be a blacksmith. That though was to do with Tenoch's character's desire to 'go and sort his life out back home'.
So ultimately whilst the main character performance is solid, credit must also go to Ricardo Benet for weaving this story together, creating the mis-en-scene's that set up a well constructed narrative underpinning, that still portrays a lostness at home, rather than abroad (at least for Lucy's character) in Lost In Translation, using cuts from scene to scene, as well as often panoramic views of New York localities, followed by intimate conversations.
Anyway, I guess it goes without saying, highly recommended!
