FILM REVIEW: City Island
© A.J. Malouin 2010
(Rating: 3 by A.J. Malouin.)
(See our side-bar page “How We Rate Movies”)
(2009/USA. Directed [and written] by Raymond De Felitta.)
This piece starts out blob-slowly, like one of those Blooming Onions I’ve seen people eat in chain restaurants all across America. It’s all of an early voice-over by our hero Italian-American family head, Vince Rizzo. Rizzo talks of his neighborhood, an ancient enclave in the shadow of what used to be the Twin Towers. It’s a city island, upon which people still earn their livings as fisher folk. It’s peopled by “clam-diggers” who have lived there for generations, and by “oyster-suckers” who a brand-new to the situation.
Rizzo drones on voice-over for ten minutes — and then we start meeting his family. It turns out they all have secrets, none of which they share with each other, and none of are truly impactful upon a tightly knit family — which, in spite of all high-spirited yelling at each other, is exactly what this family is.
Quite quickly, the film turns from puzzling to delightful.
Vince Rizzo is a prison guard who has ambitions about being an actor. He taking acting classes from Michael Malakov (Alan Arkin!) Rizzo is so embarrassed about the acting classes, however, that he tells his wife he is going into The City once a week to play poker.
His wife Joyce, played Fiery-Italian by Julianna Margulies, comes to equate “poker” with “I’m-having-an-affair” and plots her revenge with a muscular young man on prison work-release who is going some re-modeling (and modeling!) around the house.
This is a bad move from several angles, as we discover when we discover who the muscle-hunk really is!
The two children of Joyce and Vince have there own secrets, also. Daughter Vivian has been secretly tossed out of college and is earning money is a profession of dubious virtue. Live-at-home son, Vince, Jr. is internet-addicted to the gustatory charms of a very chubby food chef whom he discovers, to his glee and potential down-fall, is living right around the corner.
The other ingredient in what turns out to be a delightful family feast is Molly, played by Emily Mortimer with such an innocent loverly charm that she might be the Wendy who could float the entire film off into the sweet aroma of The Lost Boys Who Never Grew Up.
Molly is in the acting class with Vince. Together they work, and share secrets that they would never share with their own family. Their intimacy is like the intimacy of Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” — excepting that, in this case, the intimacies exchanged are not “Let’s Exchange Murderers” but are more in the area of an Andy Hardy movie: “I know! We’ll put on a play!”
When Vince finally does get an audition, for a Scorsese film, he throws away his acting classes and calls upon lessons he has learned on the street. Vince, BTW, is played by Andy Garcia. When Vince strips himself down to his essence and throws himself into the audition, he performs a piece of acting that will make you weep.
Alan Arkin, as always, has his moments in this film. Joyce and Vince’s kids are beguiling, also. Emily Mortimer alone is worth the price of admission into this film, as well as admission into two other Mega-Plex “Summer popcorn movies” playing down the street.
Just out there beyond it goopy blob-like Blooming-Onion opening, “City Island” peels back to deliver a loverly feast of a film. Do not miss seeing it!
(1 hr 44. Rated PG-13 in the USA for sexual content, smoking, and language. In English. With Andy Garcia as Vince Rizzo, Julianna Margulies as Joyce Rizzo, Steven Strait as Tony Nardella, Dominik García-Lorido as Vivian Rizzo, Ezra Miller as Vince Jr., Emily Mortimer as Molly, Alan Arkin as Michael Malakov, Jee Young Han as a Casting Assistant, Sharon Angela as Tanya, Joseph Cintron as a prison guard, Kelvin Hale as a prison guard, and Louis Mustillo as the owner of the strip club.)