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Many films based on true stories probably seem like good ideas while storyboarding but suffer because there just isn't that much happening on screen. That's not to say they're bad, but a real-life event doesn't automatically make for an entertaining movie. Take that trip I made to the gas station on the way to work today. It was uneventful, and while I'm happy with the way things turned out, it isn't something that should be rushed into production anytime soon.
That's part of the problem with An American Rhapsody - it's just a bunch of stuff that happens. The film kicks off during the early 1950s in Soviet-controlled Hungary, where a young family is about to hightail it through the Red Curtain to make a new life for themselves in America. Peter (Tony Goldwyn, Bounce) and his kin are well off (he owns a publishing house, just like Goldwyn's character in Substance of Fire), which makes it easier to bribe their way into Austria. With him are wife Margit (Nastassja Kinski, The Claim) and young daughter Marie (Kelly Banlaki). Not making the journey is their infant, Suzanne, who will stay behind and, somehow, meet them in Vienna in a few days (it's never clearly explained).
Of course, things go wrong and the family is forced to leave for the U.S before little Suzanne can meet them, because it's apparently really important to stick to an itinerary when you're taking a trip. While Peter and crew eat barbeque and listen to Elvis in suburban Los Angeles, Suzanne is stuck with a pair of surrogate parents (Zsuzsa Czinkóczi and Balázs Galkó) back in Budapest, where, presumably, she eats kindling and listens to Zamfir. But she's happy, and that's all that matters.
With help from the Red Cross, Peter and Margit are finally able to have young Suzanne flown to the United States, where she is finally reunited with the parents she never knew. She has trouble fitting in (think having an older sister is hard? Try one who literally can't understand you) and longs to return to the people who raised her, considering them more parental than her biological parents. Rhapsody flashes forward several years, where Suzanne (Scarlett Johansson, Ghost World) is now a rebellious teen who constantly butts heads with her mother, who has now become a Red Curtain unto herself, locking Suzanne into her bedroom and barring the windows shut. To escape the oppression, Suzanne decides to go back to Hungary.
This is where things begin to go askew in the film. For starters, it's hard to believe a teenage girl would want to ditch mid '60s suburban Southern California for Cold War Budapest, no matter how badly her life is going (she could have hung around a few more years and joined the Manson Family, for pete's sake). Plus it offers little resolution to the preceding scenes of full-on teen angst. But, again, it's a true story, so you can't complain too much about the lack of excitement.
Writer/director Éva Gárdos, who makes her debut behind the camera here, has created a partially autobiographical film of her own youth. She previously worked as an editor, most recently on two films directed by Anjelica Huston (Bastard Out of Carolina and Agnes Browne). Gárdos certainly has an eye for striking images, especially the shot of Suzanne wearing a red coat while standing on a bridge in gray, lifeless Budapest. She also chose to shoot the film's early scenes in black and white, switching to color stock when the family finally crosses the border into Austria.
Rhapsody loses a bunch of points for having a third act that doesn't make much sense, but gains some back for not being the calculating tearjerker you might expect. And it scores even more points for not wussing out on the whole language thing. I screened Rhapsody a few days after seeing Captain Corelli's Mandolin, in which Nicolas Cage pretended he was an Italian speaking Greek but was reciting his lines English the whole damn time. That's not good enough for me, and it's not good enough for Rhapsody, either. Goldwyn and Kinski actually speak Magyar in the film's early scenes (they're subtitled), which is a hundred times more enjoyable than hearing them butcher some accent.
1:42 - PG-13 for some violent content and thematic material
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