One of the most enjoyable experiences I had at the film festival (it definitely helped its case that it is a quirky comedy in a sea of war films and over-serious and/or pretentious arthouse and indie films), with a cool cast headlined by Andy Garcia and including Julianna Margulies (who strangely looks more like Famke Janssen with the make-up she puts on here), Steven Strait (of 10,000 B.C. fame, which I always thought was unfortunate and figured he could do better), and Ezra Miller (who plays the lead character in the intense and memorable Afterschool which I saw at the same film festival last year), Emily Mortimer (... and now back to a British role, what's she doing here?), and a small role which stars a typically cantankerous Alan Arkin (Academy-Award winner ... you know, that yellow movie).
The movie begins with a monologue (American independent films and their opening monologues, it's like a relationship between a boy and his penis) about a very location-specific explanation on the difference between 'clam diggers' and 'mussel suckers'. (In ordinary parlance, locals and outsiders.) After that, we get introduced to a quirky and (what else?) dysfunctional family, where everyone is hiding a secret, the parents scream at each other a lot, family dinners have never run smoothly in years, and suspicion is the first reaction towards any piece of information. Oh and the kid has a fetish that couldn't be boiled down to a single word; he likes to feed fat people. (Ezra Miller so totally sells this character, the sort of younger brother character who constantly annoys everyone else but is never himself annoyed.)The film has a lot of funny and occasionally surreal moments, all enjoyable, which, surprises of surprises, leads down to an explosive ending where all characters converge at the epicentre and slog it out. And that's as much as I'll say about the plot.
My favourite moment is to hear Alan Arkin, who plays an acting teacher, tear into his irritation with his acting students who do nothing but PAUSE in between lines. Oh yes, they don't just do it in Malaysia (but BOY do they do it in Malaysia), but theatre actors do it, and amateur film actors do it (and amateur editors don't seem to want to cut it). "We need to call a moratorium on pauses! 5 years of my life is lost to hearing actors pause! ... In the past, actors never pause; all of a sudden, Brando comes into the picture ... it's just bullshit!" (This section is aimed at Malaysian indie filmmakers. Enough with the pauses. For everybody's sake.)In general, the dialogue is snappy, especially the argument scenes; but can also be sensitive and tender, like the conversations between Garcia's and Mortimer's characters. I also liked the laidback, quirky music – which I saw from the end credits, to my surprise, is scored by Jan A. P. Kaczmarek. (He won an Oscar for the plain-sounding Finding Neverland.)
Did I Like It? Very much yes!
Did I Fall Asleep? Not at all.
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