Telluride. Prodigal Sons.

"I'm not sure that it's especially 'good' in the sense of being flawlessly made. But it's a film about inescapable flaws. Sometimes a movie does the simplest thing film has to offer: it shows us something we have never quite seen or felt before; it shows us something that shocks and alarms us - and that doesn't have to be an ingredient from a horror picture, or something capable of fictional redemption."

Updated through 9/2.

"Fact that the film was directed by a transsexual returning to her native Helena, Mont, two decades after having left as a star high school quarterback, seems almost commonplace compared to the circumstances of Kimberly Reed's adopted brother, who only recently discovered he is the hitherto unknown grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy.

"[U]ltimately she's less concerned with Marc's geneology than in his unlikely status as anti-social “other” in a family in which he's the only sibling without an LGBT identification," notes Karina Longworth in the SpoutBlog: "Prodigal Sons ultimately falls into the unfortunate trap of so many post-digital personal documentaries: it's an Everybody Has One movie. Everyone has one tragic/triumphant story that, if shaped correctly, could make sufficient fodder for a film - but that doesn't mean that everyone is a filmmaker."

"Reed tries to weave her story, her brother's story, and their dramatic family conflict into a coherent documentary, but in this case a more experienced filmmaker/outsider might have been better suited to shape this mother lode of material," agrees Variety's Anne Thompson.

Update, 9/2: JJ at As Little as Possible: "The Telluride experience magnified the film. The doc ended, I was exhilirated, and then the emcee pointed out that the entire featured family is sitting in the audience not two rows behind me. Having just seen their lives laid bare onscreen, it was a special privilege to see and thank them in person."

Posted by dwhudson at August 31, 2008 7:15 AM