TWO FAMILY HOUSE ----------------
Buddy Visalo (Michael Rispoli, "Summer of Sam") dreams of becoming a singer after Arthur Godfrey catches him at an armed forces show and asks him to audition. Once Buddy's back from WWII, his fiance Estelle (Katherine Narducci, HBO's "The Sopranos") and her parents refocus him into a more 'practical' career working at a local factory and living with the in-laws on Staten Island. Eleven years later, when a ramshackle two family house is within his financial reach, Buddy thinks he and Estelle can live upstairs and convert the downstairs into a tavern where he can entertain in this year's Sundance Audience Award winner, "Two Family House."
LAURA:
Estelle hates the house, but just knows that Buddy will lose it anyway. She appears to be right when they can't get rid of their upstairs Irish immigrant tenants, the O'Nearys (Kevin Conway, "The Quick and the Dead," and Kelly Macdonald, "Trainspotting"). Things get even worse when the woman, Mary, who is hugely pregnant, gives birth to a black child. Mary's abusive husband Jim abandons her and Estelle demands that Buddy throw her out to quell the neighborhood gossip. This he does, but guilt nags at him and, even though he's short on cash himself, he sets her and her child up in a pleasant little local walkup. Soon, Mary becomes the encouraging sounding board he's never had in Estelle.
This is a nice little film, featuring some good performances. Rispoli is genuinely likeable, a decent man with modest ambitions. His quandary when Estelle demands he throw a young mother out on the street is written all over his face. When he finally lets his emotions out (to Mary), he sinks to his knees and balls his fists in his eyes, then regains his composure and tries to convince Mary (who's not buying it) that that really wasn't like him. His final scene with Estelle contains a simple gesture that's incredibly moving.
Katherine Narducci makes Estelle frustrating for the audience when she not only refuses to support Buddy, but belittles him to her girlfriends, yet we can only sympathize with her knowing that her behavior is driven by fear and the parochialism of her 1950s community. (De Felitta's script helps her when Buddy's failed business ventures are chronicled in an amusing montage.) She's willing to help Mary until the color of Mary's child introduces concepts beyond her grasp.
Kelly Macdonald ("Trainspotting") is less engaging than the two leads, initially suspicious, she barely warms up. She is sweet when attempting to purchase Italian groceries, mispronouncing everything, to learn cooking from Buddy.
Writer/director Raymond De Felitta ("Cafe Society") has based his story on his uncle, although he's given him a happier ending. De Felitta shows more strength in his direction than his writing. While his dialog rings true for its time and place (a lot of ethnic and racial slurs are flung around), his story telegraphs its every move. The film's climax begins powerfully, but devolves into a stickily sweet romanticism that logically doesn't ring true.
Still "Two Family House" is an engaging slice of life that I would particularly recommend to the generation portrayed, the ones that begat us baby boomers.
B
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