Right from the getgo, this movie gets your attention with black-and-white credits that look like something out of the French new wave. Only it takes place in Buenos Aires. Not what you expect from Francis Ford Coppola, the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, to say nothing of the 1996 Robin Williams dramedy Jack. Vincent Gallo, who once wrote, directed, and starred in the very entertaining Buffalo ’66 (as well as 2003’s notorious Brown Bunny), returns from near oblivion to star as the would-of-been writer sought out by a teenager (Alden Ehrenreich) looking for his brother. But the writer—now an underemployed lighting technician—wants nothing to do with any of his family, especially the father, a genius conductor played by Klaus Maria Brandauer in color flashbacks. (Coppola’s own father was conductor/composer Carmine Coppola.)
After 1997’s The Rainmaker, Coppola made no movies until 2007’s less-commercial Youth Without Youth, and this one is clearly also directed toward an art-house crowd. Even so, what starts out as a small sort of movie with three characters—the third being the live-in girlfriend, who insists on taking in the teenager—develops into a full-scale melodrama, complete with a scenery-chewing Ehrenreich nearly burning down an auditorium. Despite this, or maybe because of it, the big family-history revelations don’t pack the emotional punch intended. But the variation in moods, including light comedy at times, and the cinematic sweep of the end is not without its charms. It could be worth a look for those looking for something different.
IMDB link
viewed 7/1/09 at Ritz East (Landmark Theatres screening) and reviewed 7/9/09
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