Tribeca Film Festival Edition!
Let’s say you’re on a first date with a girl. Within the first five minutes of dinner (let’s say right after you’ve been seated and are looking through the drink menu) she mentions that she had once been kidnapped, raped, and tortured. Off-putting right? I mean even under the best circumstances. Now pretend the dinner has movie theater rules in that it would be rude to leave within the first five minutes. You must give the story a chance to develop. So you inquire as to what the hell she is talking about. She says she doesn’t remember and won’t talk any more about it. Dinner goes on. You try to engage her in interesting conversation upon any topic whatsoever. She’s having none of it, but she will from time to time spontaneously bust out into tears or get inexplicably angry. At other times she will make obvious overtures that the whole thing is an act. At no time does she act like a recognizable human being. During the main entrée (which is bland and tasteless) you suspect that you’re getting Punk’d by that asshole Ashton Kutcher. An hour later during dessert (which is boooring) she finally admits it. This is a prank show. No shit Sherlock. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. Anyway that’s how it felt to watch this movie.
A boy from Louisiana went missing awhile back. Four years later, he was found in France. He said he was kidnapped, raped, and tortured. The French Authorities contact his family who come to pick him up. They identify him as their own and take them back to their house. That’s when it gets weird. His mother eyes him suspiciously. A brother stops by, yells a bit, and leaves. The boy wears a frown the entire time, doesn’t remember anything, and speaks in an obvious French accent. Finally there’s a cop who suspects he is not who he says he is. (Spoiler Alert!) He isn’t by the way. He is just some kid from France who pretended he was the missing boy. The thing is that the missing boy was actually murdered by his brother. The family takes in the French dude because they can’t admit that the real son will never be found. Now imagine all of this being told in a really cliché, confusing, and boring way.
They say this story is based on real life. If it is the screenwriter should be ashamed of himself. Rudimentary basic research would flesh out certain details that go needlessly absent here. Like for instance: How the original boy disappeared, Why the cop thinks the new boy is lying, Does the sister actually believe the new boy, if so why, what’s with the mom, why does she like him in one scene but not the next, what’s with the boy, is he succeeding in his plans, why is he frowning all the time, is he constipated, what are the simple details of this case? Instead the writer has decided to go all-ambiguous on us. When a director goes all-ambiguous on us there are two possibilities as to why. Either, for someone like Hitchcock, he is telling a complex story and uses ambiguity to misdirect the audience to set up a well-choreographed reveal or twist later on. Or, for a movie like this, the director/writer didn’t know how to tell the story. Perhaps they couldn’t even keep their own plot straight. In this case, the director will usually claim that they meant for it to be ambiguous to cover their ass. “What, you didn’t understand my movie? Yeah, I meant to do that! How very deep of me.”
There is one scene that is just so laughably bad. Without any apparent motivation the angry older brother drives up to the French kid and aggressively in a friendly manner tells him to get in the car so they will “go for a ride.” (He has done this once before which ended with him dropping the kid off a couple miles down the road.) The French kid doesn’t want to. The brother insists that they "go for a ride." The French kid gets in the car. They drive to a gravel pit. They get out of the car. The brother cracks open a beer and what does he say, “Hey come on, let’s go for a ride.” The French kid doesn’t want to but the brother insists. And I am just sitting there going, What? Did he really just drive to a gravel pit to do nothing other than get out of the car and insist that they go drive somewhere else? Really?
The movie doesn’t make any sense until the movie finally spills a few details near the end. By that time I had lost all interest. Here’s a rule: A surprise ending can’t stand-alone. It should be the icing on an already finished cake. Movies that employ big twists at the end still need complete storylines and in-depth characters. (Good examples are ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘The Sixth Sense’) This is essential. You need something to keep the audience occupied with as you set up the reveal. If there is no cake, the icing will not hold.
The one person I recognized in this movie was Emile de Ravin, who I know very well from the TV show ‘Lost.’ I am really getting tired of seeing her cry in every other scene she’s in. She should do something about that. Nobody else here deserves mention.
One more thing: It was pretty cool to go to my first Film Festival. I liked that. I still have my pass. Go Tribeca!
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