Tribeca Dispatch. 3.

If you've ever thought of moving to Florida, or wished that you grew up there, see Bart Got a Room, the debut comedy by Brian Hecker, a high school prom comedy in which senior Danny Stein (Steven J Kaplan) has everything but a girlfriend. Yet he's still determined to go the prom. Shake well and serve.

The film was shot in Hollywood - Hollywood, Florida, that is - Hecker's dystopian hometown, which makes Miami look glamorous. I don't whether he lives there now, but somehow I doubt it. Danny, no surprise, is Jewish, although the fact that his parents are played by arch-gentiles Cheryl Hines and a tightly curled William H Macy clues you in to the absurd dimension of Hecker's script. Think of the palette of magic realism, and then transfer it to a parking lot.

Danny's parents have just divorced, and are already casualties of the singles scene. The boy is prepared to follow in his parents' misbegotten footsteps, with a nose that only a plastic surgeon could love. Hence the endless schtick of everyone giving him advice on what to do - from the parents of his chubby and freckled friend, Camille, who expects to be taken to the prom, to portly Craig, a fat peer with divorced parents - everyone seems to have them - who is tanning himself, without much success, in his swimming pool in preparation for the main event. Each character here is more deluded than the next, each one adding to the fun of this wry observation of a rite of passage. Think of The Tender Trap (1955) with Frank Sinatra, or the little-known classic, The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1969), in which a smalltime Jewish racketeer, just out of prison, is under siege in the kitschy Bronx from well-wishers who want to find him a wife.

The title comes from a line that all the boys who talk to Danny repeat. A room is a synonym for prom night "action," and even Bart, the school's biggest nerd, has reserved one. Hecker has a keen ear for dialogue and for the way kids talk - a rare thing, in spite of the endless number of high school movies out there. He has a delicate touch with his mostly-young cast, so the gags don't have to pile on top of the zinger lines and try to nudge a laugh out of you. In fact, Hecker's craft, still on the way up, could use some refinement. I found that scenes tended to be too short, that the laughs could have been extended, and that's rare in a commercial comedy. It's a good beginning for a young writer/director with plenty of potential.

From Colombia comes Paraiso Travel [site], an immigrant saga directed by Simon Brand about two attractive kids from middle-class Medellin who decide to move to New York. It's no small ambition, if you're starting out in Colombia. It will cost them $3000 just to get started, and in case you haven't guessed, the going is not smooth. We encounter Carlos and Reina when they are already living in the kind of subdivided basement that becomes home for thousands of illegal arrivals in the outer boroughs of New York City. They fight, Carlos goes out for a smoke, and when police stop him for littering, a chase follows which injures a cop and takes Carlos so far away from his basement that he can't find his way back - and he can't speak English.

Paraiso Travel shifts between two odysseys - Carlos's quest to find Reina, and the couple's initial trip through Guatemala and Mexico to get to the US. The first strand presents a pretty generic view of New York as a very cold town when you're Colombian, broke and unable to speak anything but Spanish. It's the second story that's harrowing, the best thing about this movie. Paraiso Travel has been a hit in Colombia since January, and Tim Padgett's gushing feature/review in Time saw it as an "honest look at illegal immigration," and an indication of the Colombian cinema miracle that's just over the horizon. That's about as realistic as saying that Raul Castillo, who plays Carlos, is the next Gael García Bernal - and people are saying that, although 99.9% of them are Colombian women. Angelica Blandon, who plays Carlos's sexy and impulsive girlfriend, may be someone worth watching as well.

From Mexico comes Love, Pain & Vice Versa, a formal exercise directed by Alfonso Pineda-Ulloa about a young woman architect, Chelo (Bárbara Mori), who decides to find the man who has been haunting her dreams for a year. She ends up running over the fiancée of the man in question, Dr Marquez, (Leonardo Sbaragli), who looks like an Armani-model posing as a cardiologist. Their two fantasies and attractions clash, all heading to a dark ending in faceless locations in Mexico City, with rain pounding like an endless Hitchcock loop, and music pulsing at every pivotal moment.

Pineda-Ulloa is a UCLA grad from the producers' program, and he studied photography in Mexico City. He has talent - a sure hand with the camera and with his actors, and a sophomoric need to impress whoever's watching. The film plays like a job application with an overcharged resume of someone seeking high-budget commercial work, and offers strong evidence that he would be able to shoot a music video, a fashion ad, or even a feature. Let's hope this talented young man makes a movie next time.

More from Tribeca here.

Posted by dwhudson at April 29, 2008 12:49 AM