I wonder how many, if any, real Italian comedies writer/director Raymond De Felitta has seen. I mean the ones where the characters are all very emotional, both in their anger, their fears, their sadness, their joy, and what they may hide or how they brag. City Island reflects an Italian family, the Rizzos, who are functionally dysfunctional in a manner that doesn't lessen these people as actual people. True, each one is given something of a sitcom set-up or quirk (i.e. the daughter is part of the "stripper myth" that a girl can pay her way through college after losing her scholarship by stripteasing; the son has a thing for fat girls, and the father is a secret actor in his spare time). But everyone is well-rounded, we know that they are good-hearted and care for one another, and laugh at how easily they're able to go from 1 to 10 on the I'll-tear-your-head-off-for-saying-that scale.
The film works because it is, in part, genuinely funny. We see how the characters react when confronted with their hidden selves, or what they're hiding; a dinner table scene where Vince, who has brought home his son, who is also an ex-con he has never seen until know, hides from the family he's his son and that he's an ex-con, while the daughter hides/becomes awkward when her skimpy top reveals something else about herself (watch that glance Vince has at her daughter's chest, it's a big laugh). Vince has the most to hide, for some good and silly reasons (he doesn't want to reveal his aspirations for acting, even when a cheery British girl pushes him to audition for the latest De Niro/Scorsese movie), but others have something to hide as well. Comparatively to daughter and mother, the son Tony's fetish of feeding as sexual contact is actually not that bad. It's funny to see his fetish, but not in a mocking tone; De Felitta finds the human notes here, the awkward realization a classmate of Tony's has when she sees him with a hefty woman in a supermarket picking out food.
The big question comes as to what Vince is really doing when he's going out for his "Card" games (it's really an acting class, led by a very amusing Alan Arkin who states simply "No pauses, no more pauses!"), and how his wife, antsy and almost typical Italian housewife Joyce (very funny and sexy Julianna Marguiles) will react, especially with such a hot number as this mysterious guy supposedly helping Vince make a new toilet in the backyard. De Felitta keeps the tension and humor rising in what is basically all in one day and night (though in the second half of the film) and the acting and writing is splendid here. So that by the time the big explosive climax on the sidewalk at night happens, we know everything will unravel, and it will be dramatic and hilarious, sometimes within the same sentence! It's rare to have that combination but this film has it.
It also helps that Andy Garcia gives a surprising performance. He's often seen in films as a tough guy or without much of a sense of humor (see him in the Oceans Eleven movies as the one character), but here he shows how real he can be as a father of a family with a lot of problems and no real good reason why he can't just come out to say what he needs to, except of course for the truth being stranger than fiction. At the same time that he can be level-headed and down to earth with Emily Mortimer's Molly (a breath of fresh air following a less than satisfying turn in Harry Brown), Garcia leads the pack with the comedy in the film. When he goes into the audition and a) does a Marlon Brando imitation that brings the house down, and b) makes up an "improv" as if he were acting tough in his prison guard position, we see in the right role Garcia can be one of the funniest actors out there.
Another plus: City Island, it's one-mile stretch of land filled with people tagged as either muscle-suckers or clam diggers, looks great here, if somewhat (though spot-on) a little suburban enclave. 7.5/10
The film works because it is, in part, genuinely funny. We see how the characters react when confronted with their hidden selves, or what they're hiding; a dinner table scene where Vince, who has brought home his son, who is also an ex-con he has never seen until know, hides from the family he's his son and that he's an ex-con, while the daughter hides/becomes awkward when her skimpy top reveals something else about herself (watch that glance Vince has at her daughter's chest, it's a big laugh). Vince has the most to hide, for some good and silly reasons (he doesn't want to reveal his aspirations for acting, even when a cheery British girl pushes him to audition for the latest De Niro/Scorsese movie), but others have something to hide as well. Comparatively to daughter and mother, the son Tony's fetish of feeding as sexual contact is actually not that bad. It's funny to see his fetish, but not in a mocking tone; De Felitta finds the human notes here, the awkward realization a classmate of Tony's has when she sees him with a hefty woman in a supermarket picking out food.
The big question comes as to what Vince is really doing when he's going out for his "Card" games (it's really an acting class, led by a very amusing Alan Arkin who states simply "No pauses, no more pauses!"), and how his wife, antsy and almost typical Italian housewife Joyce (very funny and sexy Julianna Marguiles) will react, especially with such a hot number as this mysterious guy supposedly helping Vince make a new toilet in the backyard. De Felitta keeps the tension and humor rising in what is basically all in one day and night (though in the second half of the film) and the acting and writing is splendid here. So that by the time the big explosive climax on the sidewalk at night happens, we know everything will unravel, and it will be dramatic and hilarious, sometimes within the same sentence! It's rare to have that combination but this film has it.
It also helps that Andy Garcia gives a surprising performance. He's often seen in films as a tough guy or without much of a sense of humor (see him in the Oceans Eleven movies as the one character), but here he shows how real he can be as a father of a family with a lot of problems and no real good reason why he can't just come out to say what he needs to, except of course for the truth being stranger than fiction. At the same time that he can be level-headed and down to earth with Emily Mortimer's Molly (a breath of fresh air following a less than satisfying turn in Harry Brown), Garcia leads the pack with the comedy in the film. When he goes into the audition and a) does a Marlon Brando imitation that brings the house down, and b) makes up an "improv" as if he were acting tough in his prison guard position, we see in the right role Garcia can be one of the funniest actors out there.
Another plus: City Island, it's one-mile stretch of land filled with people tagged as either muscle-suckers or clam diggers, looks great here, if somewhat (though spot-on) a little suburban enclave. 7.5/10