No words of praise can be too high. This is a story without pretense: real friends among real people in a real Italian Hoboken neighborhood playing out, through a plot of unexpected depth, the reality of their relationships -- well or ill -- in real dives and real laundromats. It's not a movie of profound ideas; it's a movie of profound emotions: of complex affections and loyalties, of substantial characters surprised at their own feelings and confused by their own unchecked actions, of intricacy out of the simple, nobility from the ordinary. The only pretense here is the studied lack of all pretense.
Before another word: all the roles, all of them -- wives, buddies, parents, priest, gangster, cop and boss -- are played here with the robust sensitivity, depth and perfection, that allows no space between actor and role, a credit also to director, cinematographer, writer and editor who have orchestrated, captured and rendered them in exquisite and moving detail.
I could offer dozens of examples. Here's one: at moments of rapid emotional crisis among the characters in dialogue and plot, the camera time and again includes distantly among the commotion Angela Pupello's wordlessly expressive glance (how does she express such specific response with just her eyes and a bit of lighting?) -- blink twice and you'll miss it -- a quick, silent contrapuntal reminder of the delicate web that touches every role with a stake in this story. Or Stephie Kurtzuba (whose plays defensive, vapid meanness with irresistible relish; as repulsive and richly hateful as it is, you just want to see more of her and her cigarette) sitting bust forward like a fortress, her formidable armor ready to take on the worst. It's a little detail -- again, blink and it's gone -- but wonderful. There are many, many more such, ranging over every actor.
Special mention must be made of the central role, because it is this role that carries the whole. Elizabeth Regen, working from an ideally naturalistic script, has created a woman this viewer will not soon forget. I believe I have never been so moved by a character in drama. The operatic premise helps, of course, to pull on the heartstrings, but this is sublime acting in a role of almost unbearable beauty. I don't think I could watch it twice. Like love, it's too painful to want to repeat.
So much for the production values.
The story is buttressed by one of the most appealing of all situations, maybe first introduced by Remarque's "Three Comrades" -- three close buddies with a female fourth. Set them in an ethnic neighborhood and give the buddies three wives and you're ready to roll.
Against this background all hung in thick clichés, all endearing, all forgivable, the plot proceeds from the most Pirandellian means: a single act, a few words, the mere existence of a single character, inevitably and irretrievably bends the rigid social framework prying the human roles out of their tight but fragile security, cleaving them from their intimate loves and loyalties, til all exposed before you, they display the emotions that have overtaken them despite themselves and because of themselves. This plot is anything but hackneyed.
The irreversible course of consequences is punctuated by outrageous humor, here and there predictable, but the slyer moments where the humor proceeds from character itself rather than gimmick, wickedly funny, belly-laugh funny. At the moral center stands the familiar polar contrast between cold, fierce, defensive respectability and the heat of genuine, open feeling, warm with reflective compassion.
In a word, the movie explores the confluence of friendship and love, that vague, welcoming climate home to both where the two, loyalty on the one side and desire on the other, can't be distinguished. It is the achievement of this particular exploration that it gives to the players such extraordinary nobility.
Some will love the music. I appreciate the choices, especially the use of a non-operatic voice in the soprano arias, but I'd have enjoyed the movie just as much without any music at all. Unerring screenplay, overwhelming acting, brilliant, incisive cinematography and direction and editing, who needs music?
I loved these people, these actors, these movie-makers. The genuine historic Hoboken, gentrifying quickly and quickly disappearing, can't have been given a better tribute.
--Rob
Before another word: all the roles, all of them -- wives, buddies, parents, priest, gangster, cop and boss -- are played here with the robust sensitivity, depth and perfection, that allows no space between actor and role, a credit also to director, cinematographer, writer and editor who have orchestrated, captured and rendered them in exquisite and moving detail.
I could offer dozens of examples. Here's one: at moments of rapid emotional crisis among the characters in dialogue and plot, the camera time and again includes distantly among the commotion Angela Pupello's wordlessly expressive glance (how does she express such specific response with just her eyes and a bit of lighting?) -- blink twice and you'll miss it -- a quick, silent contrapuntal reminder of the delicate web that touches every role with a stake in this story. Or Stephie Kurtzuba (whose plays defensive, vapid meanness with irresistible relish; as repulsive and richly hateful as it is, you just want to see more of her and her cigarette) sitting bust forward like a fortress, her formidable armor ready to take on the worst. It's a little detail -- again, blink and it's gone -- but wonderful. There are many, many more such, ranging over every actor.
Special mention must be made of the central role, because it is this role that carries the whole. Elizabeth Regen, working from an ideally naturalistic script, has created a woman this viewer will not soon forget. I believe I have never been so moved by a character in drama. The operatic premise helps, of course, to pull on the heartstrings, but this is sublime acting in a role of almost unbearable beauty. I don't think I could watch it twice. Like love, it's too painful to want to repeat.
So much for the production values.
The story is buttressed by one of the most appealing of all situations, maybe first introduced by Remarque's "Three Comrades" -- three close buddies with a female fourth. Set them in an ethnic neighborhood and give the buddies three wives and you're ready to roll.
Against this background all hung in thick clichés, all endearing, all forgivable, the plot proceeds from the most Pirandellian means: a single act, a few words, the mere existence of a single character, inevitably and irretrievably bends the rigid social framework prying the human roles out of their tight but fragile security, cleaving them from their intimate loves and loyalties, til all exposed before you, they display the emotions that have overtaken them despite themselves and because of themselves. This plot is anything but hackneyed.
The irreversible course of consequences is punctuated by outrageous humor, here and there predictable, but the slyer moments where the humor proceeds from character itself rather than gimmick, wickedly funny, belly-laugh funny. At the moral center stands the familiar polar contrast between cold, fierce, defensive respectability and the heat of genuine, open feeling, warm with reflective compassion.
In a word, the movie explores the confluence of friendship and love, that vague, welcoming climate home to both where the two, loyalty on the one side and desire on the other, can't be distinguished. It is the achievement of this particular exploration that it gives to the players such extraordinary nobility.
Some will love the music. I appreciate the choices, especially the use of a non-operatic voice in the soprano arias, but I'd have enjoyed the movie just as much without any music at all. Unerring screenplay, overwhelming acting, brilliant, incisive cinematography and direction and editing, who needs music?
I loved these people, these actors, these movie-makers. The genuine historic Hoboken, gentrifying quickly and quickly disappearing, can't have been given a better tribute.
--Rob