Filmmakers’ Fortnight
The strong presence (four films) of American independent cinema at the Filmmakers’ Fortnight this year naturally arouses curiosity, as we have used and abused a category where there are many called but few chosen. The first of them to join the dance brings us in any case onto familiar ground, at least for moviegoers who make a virtue of their pathology, mania. Its author, Tyler Taormina, 33 years old, officiating in the City of Angels within a collective of young directors (Omnes Films), has, in fact, made himself known to the European public with his first two feature films.
Ham on Rye, the first of them, released in French theaters in 2021, is a coming-of-age film, the time of a long nocturnal party on Long Island, which itself takes on uncertainty and charm horrors experienced by its young protagonists. Presented at the Berlin Festival in February 2022, unpublished in France, the second, entitled Happer’s Comettook us back to the night of this suburban suburb which is none other than the author’s childhood neighborhood, to organize a new nocturnal escape, banal and untimely, ultimately enchanted.
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point transports us once again to this country dear to the heart of the filmmaker: that of the middle-class suburbs, that of the night which reinvents us, that of childhood which it is always too early to leave. Here, an Italian-American family from Long Island, celebrating their last Christmas Eve under the same roof, which the weakening of the old mother makes inevitable.
Exquisite painter of atmosphere
Tyler Taormina confirms himself as an exquisite painter of atmosphere. Transforming a plot on a postage stamp (what are we going to do with the ancestor?) into an elegy for the passing of time and a form of discreet Americana. Turkey. Fir. The warmth of the hearth. The tender hysteria of family love. The help of rituals against “impermanence” – as Alain Chamfort would say – fundamental to life. A garland of sixties hits – Why Don’t They Let Us Fall in LoveRonettes; Stayby Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs; Wind Up Dollby Little Peggy March… – bringing together the nostalgia of a world that is slipping away and that we would like to remember forever.
That’s it, nothing else actually. Yes, the young people who sneak away, in the dead of night, to mortgage their future just a stone’s throw from home. They wander in a group in the snowy desert of a provincial town where nothing could ever happen, under the watchful eye of two local cops, among whom we recognize the actor Michael Cera. He was one of the teenagers obsessed with SuperSevere (2007), by Greg Mottola, emanation of the Judd Apatow galaxy, then pope of the new comedy made in the USA.
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