AN AMERICAN RHAPSODY ---------------------
When Margit (Nastassja Kinski, "The Claim") and Peter (Tony Goldwyn, "The Sixth Day") flea from 1950s Hungary with their daughter Maria, their infant is supposed to follow, but grandmother Helen's (Agi Banfalvy) fears make her keep the baby behind. Heartbroken, the family continues on to America, while baby Suzanne is raised in the Hungarian countryside. Writer/director Eva Gardos tells her own story of a life between two families and countries in "An American Rhapsody."
Childless farming couple Jeno (Balazs Galko) and Teri (Zsuzsa Czinkoczi) give Suzanne (at 6, Kelly Endresz Banlaki) an idyllic peasant folk fairytale childhood. The child is happy and adored and doesn't comprehend the occasional gifts which arrive from the United States. Peter and Margit have worked hard and achieved a middle class home in California where Maria has become a typical American child. Margit toils at a letter writing campaign to have her daughter returned to her and finally realizes her dream. Suzanne is taken from the only parents she knows (who believe she'll be returned) and sent to America, where her arrival is a media event.
While Suzanne enjoys a good relationship with her father, she's at war with her 'new' mother. The teenage Suzanne (Scarlett Johansson, "Ghost World") sneaks out of her bedroom window to drive around with her boyfriend, drink and stay out all night. Mom installs bars on the windows and a lock on the door. Suzanne loads a rifle and shoots up the room. With the family in crisis, Peter fulfills an old promise to send Suzanne to Budapest, against Margit's wishes. The trip allows Suzanne to become whole and learn the secret her mother wished to protect her from.
"An American Rhapsody" is a personal story about the meaning of home and family. Suzanne's resentment at being left behind and torn from the people who raised her is met with overwhelming mother love from the woman who's dreamt of nothing but their reunion. Elder sister Maria, ironically, is the alien of the family, somewhat taken for granted and completely assimilated into the new culture. She drinks coke and slings the slang while her babushka wearing sister gets lost in a neighborhood of identical tract houses. While these early scenes are fascinating, due in large part to the sensational Banlaki, the later teenage years become wearying in their repetitiveness, with too many scenes of Margit standing in Suzanne's bedroom doorway while her daughter sulks. Gardos doesn't get the mother's point of view across well and lets important characters like sister Maria and Suzanne's boyfriend Paul all but disappear (in fact, the shooting scene begins with Paul at the window, but he's promptly forgotten, a jarring problem in such a climatic moment).
Kinski's fine as the overprotective mom, but Johansson fails to make us empathize. Goldwyn is surprisingly good as the even tempered, practical dad. The camera just loves Banlaki, and the film's at its best when she's on screen.
Hungarian cinematographer Elemer Ragalyi ("Jacob the Liar") shoots the early escape in a bluish black and white, letting full color bloom when the family arrives in the West. The film has a retro look, as if it was filmed in the time period the story takes place in, which is also complemented by the production (Alex Tavoularis, "Apocalypse Now") and costume design (Beatrix Aruno Pasztor, "The Wonder Boys").
Reminiscent of the equally uneven "The Man Who Cried," "An American Rhapsody" takes a bumpy road on its way home.
C+
For more Reeling reviews visit www.reelingreviews.com
laura@reelingreviews.com robin@reelingreviews.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 29436 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 248866 X-RT-TitleID: 1109525 X-RT-SourceID: 386 X-RT-AuthorID: 1487 X-RT-RatingText: C+
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews