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"No more pauses!" groans a curmudgeonly acting teacher (Alan Arkin) a little more than ten minutes into Raymond De Felitta's new film City Island. A student's performance has irritated the teacher's long-held dislike of Marlon Brando's pensive style. He goes on to criticize a scene from Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind, but Brando has a silent advocate in the class: Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia), a corrections officer who attends the acting classes and masquerades them as poker games when explaining his absences to his suspicious wife Joyce (Julianna Marguiles).
All of the characters in De Felitta's film, which was written by the director, are hiding things from each other. Talking to a friendly classmate (Emily Mortimer), Vince reveals that the son that he abandoned, Tony (Steven Strait), has turned up in his jail for boosting cars. Accepting legal responsibility for the imprisoned twentysomething, Vince hesitantly takes him home only to realize that he might be his most stable offspring. Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller) is a bona-fide chubby chaser who flirts by offering to feed a classmate donuts. And daughter Vivian, played by Garcia's real-life daughter Dominik Garcia-Lorido, has taken to stripping after losing her college scholarship over a bag of pot.
Joyce initially doesn't hide much more than a rampant smoking habit but not after long she's got her hands on Tony's belt. It doesn't go much further than making out but it's passionate, as is the film. De Felitta, who directed the Sundance charmer Two Family House in 2000, continues to show a knack for familial discourse; where so many have patched family drama together with one-liners and overt sentimentality, De Felitta deals in genuine misunderstandings and suburban fears. But here, he also gets overzealous and the juicy conflicts end up feeling either jokey (Vince Jr.'s fetish) or exhausted (the sudden bloom of Vince Sr.'s acting career). Not surprisingly, it's when the family is together that the drama feels most potent, nearly overflowing in a climactic group outing in the street with Vince Jr. and two (!) buxom lady friends watching from a neighboring porch.
In a film that often invokes theories of acting and the process of performance, it feels natural that the actors are what keep the more superfluous scenes from weighing things down. Miller, so good in Antonio Campos's Afterschool, provides Vince Jr. with a wild energy that breaks up his family's standard rhythms. A one-time Miss Golden Globe, Garcia-Lorido reckons with the script's most underwritten character, but she has an ease with her father and Marguiles that can't be ignored. And bless the great Emily Mortimer for investing a throwaway character with such sincerity and wit.
It could be said that Mortimer offers a needed mirror to Garcia, but so natural and so impactful is the actor's presence that Vince can't help but dominate nearly every scene. The exception would be Marguiles who, quite simply, has never been better. She rages on and is deeply funny as the scorned Joyce, who believes she has been betrayed by her husband from the opening scene on. If the acting teacher hadn't seen Vince's restrained potential in class, Marguiles ensures that Joyce's volcanic ubiquity would be impossible to miss.
All of the characters in De Felitta's film, which was written by the director, are hiding things from each other. Talking to a friendly classmate (Emily Mortimer), Vince reveals that the son that he abandoned, Tony (Steven Strait), has turned up in his jail for boosting cars. Accepting legal responsibility for the imprisoned twentysomething, Vince hesitantly takes him home only to realize that he might be his most stable offspring. Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller) is a bona-fide chubby chaser who flirts by offering to feed a classmate donuts. And daughter Vivian, played by Garcia's real-life daughter Dominik Garcia-Lorido, has taken to stripping after losing her college scholarship over a bag of pot.
Joyce initially doesn't hide much more than a rampant smoking habit but not after long she's got her hands on Tony's belt. It doesn't go much further than making out but it's passionate, as is the film. De Felitta, who directed the Sundance charmer Two Family House in 2000, continues to show a knack for familial discourse; where so many have patched family drama together with one-liners and overt sentimentality, De Felitta deals in genuine misunderstandings and suburban fears. But here, he also gets overzealous and the juicy conflicts end up feeling either jokey (Vince Jr.'s fetish) or exhausted (the sudden bloom of Vince Sr.'s acting career). Not surprisingly, it's when the family is together that the drama feels most potent, nearly overflowing in a climactic group outing in the street with Vince Jr. and two (!) buxom lady friends watching from a neighboring porch.
In a film that often invokes theories of acting and the process of performance, it feels natural that the actors are what keep the more superfluous scenes from weighing things down. Miller, so good in Antonio Campos's Afterschool, provides Vince Jr. with a wild energy that breaks up his family's standard rhythms. A one-time Miss Golden Globe, Garcia-Lorido reckons with the script's most underwritten character, but she has an ease with her father and Marguiles that can't be ignored. And bless the great Emily Mortimer for investing a throwaway character with such sincerity and wit.
It could be said that Mortimer offers a needed mirror to Garcia, but so natural and so impactful is the actor's presence that Vince can't help but dominate nearly every scene. The exception would be Marguiles who, quite simply, has never been better. She rages on and is deeply funny as the scorned Joyce, who believes she has been betrayed by her husband from the opening scene on. If the acting teacher hadn't seen Vince's restrained potential in class, Marguiles ensures that Joyce's volcanic ubiquity would be impossible to miss.
