| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 12/29/2012 : 23:01:38
Too young for the part by a year, Quvenzhan� Wallis lied about her age to play six-year-old Hushpuppy. Sometimes, it seems, it's ok to bend the truth. For the big TRUTH is she's sensational in the part.
If I'm honest, though, and I had to compare screen performances by the two kids who, this year, carry films - I'd have to say Pierce Gagnon in Looper is the stronger. But that's because he's been given a greater acting challenge and has to sustain it for longer takes. She gets to do more significant posing and delightful/powerful facial expressions.
Which, don't get me wrong, she does wonderfully. First of all, she's absolutely adorable and the camera has fallen in love with her. Like all children at play and make believe, she commits totally.
And co-writer/director Benh Zeitlin [working with Lucy Alibar from her stage play] asks Wallis to inhabit situations which are tough enough for adults let alone kids.
Hushpuppy lives in quarters - that is she occupies a precariously balanced trailer which belonged to her missing Momma, shared with her daddy who sleeps in a makeshift thrown-together shelter of odds and ends and animals and a freezer where he stores frozen chicken which he's slaughtered to throw on the bar-b-q for Feed Up time.
Daddy, nicknamed Wink and given exuberant life by newcomer Dwight Henry, sure won't win Dad of the Year. Hell, he probably won't even get a coffee mug with those words. More like - don't bother me if I'm drunk and trying to sleep it off; or never mind where I've been, you're old enough to look after yourself; or so I've collapsed with epilepsy or lung cancer or whatever the hell I've got - just let me be.
Now, remember when our hearts went out to those folk whose lives were devastated by Hurricane Katrina? How long was it, I wonder, that our concerns - genuine as they were - faded to be replaced by some other news story of note.
Zeitlin's touching and surprising film brings us back to the emotional eye of the storm. What's best about it is the way he unfurls the story, no explanations needed, until it unrolls at our feet and all makes sad sense.
He's also, presumably with Alibar's complicity, veered significantly far from her play Juicy and Delicious - which is partly autobiographical and which features a little boy at its heart. So not only has Zeitlin opened out the drama, but he's made it his own.
The opening scenes, without very much dialogue, evoke some post-apocalyptic world. We're not sure where we are. Another country? Are we on another planet? Who are these beings - they look human, look like they're having fun, hanging on to a semblance of community, remnants of the way to carry on. There's a bit of Lord of the Flies about these early scenes.
They speak English. They try their best to look out for one another. In the midst of devastation, poverty, deprivation they share. They sing. They teach each other and make merry. Skin color - if it ever was on this small offshore island - is no barrier to being good neighbors and good friends.
Hushpuppy, for all her youth and innocence is a wise one, oh yes. Of course she expects Daddy will take care of her. He expects he will, too. Even when he doesn't. And she seems to understand, seems determined to absorb whatever knowledge she'll need if one day he doesn't come back home.
Although they're both lost without the mother and wife they each fantasize about - they're pledged to turn their loss into a survival kit.
The fascinating ways they chose, and that are sometimes chosen for them, form the film's journey.
Get on board, you won't be sorry you hitched this unexpected ride.
|
| 1 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| randall |
Posted - 01/21/2013 : 02:38:53
It's not Katrina. It's not Louisiana. It's not even earth. It's the aftermath of some cataclysmic flood somehow somewhere, and this little girl -- with Shirley-Temple-rare camera-come-hither good looks -- rocks the watery fantastique. I can't say it's the "best" *anything*, only that I'm amazed someone had the idea, and then the temerity to see it through. You just have to applaud. |
|
|
