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🦋 Vineland, now playing at your local art house

(Well not exactly but) -- Ellen and I saw "Following Sean" last night, playing at Cinema Village on 12th Street. A pretty flawed movie and I wouldn't necessarily recommend dropping everything to go see it; but it's kind of fun to watch it and pretend it was a movie of Vineland instead of what it is. Director Ralph Arlyck made a 14-minute student film in 1969 of his upstairs neighbor's 4-year-old son, Sean, which propelled him to some fame -- the film showed at Cannes with Trouffaut's "Wild Child" and was acclaimed by the counterculture, and denigrated by the establishment.

in the 1990's Arlyck looked up Sean and his parents and made this movie. A lot of the movie made me think about Vineland. There aren't really many specific parallels (although I think Sean's grandmother bears more than a passing resemblance to Frenesi's mom), just a general gestalt. (Or in truth that gestalt could have been in large part my own invention -- I don't think there was much paranoia in the script by itself.) The director's voice-over is really grating a lot of the time and ultimately ruins the film IMO. But if you approach it with the proper attitude, tune out the voice-over and imagine your own film, it can be a lot of fun.

posted evening of Saturday, May 6th, 2006

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