Review of City Island (2009) by Fernando C — 22 May 2010

City Island is an amusing comedy about family and lies. Although the characters are living in a paradisiacal area inside the Bronx, they could be living anywhere else in the world.

Recently I Love You Phillip Morris showed us the effects of a lie(s) on the life of a secretly gay man. In City Island there aren´t any secretly gay men ready to come out and there is no need for that because the members of this normal straight family are all inside the closet as they all keep secrets (some hairier than others) from each other and they all lie to each other.

Fast synopsis: Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) is a correctional officer in a state prison that wants to be an actor and hides from his wife that he´s going to acting classes, telling her he goes to play poker! His son is in the mist of adolescence, the parents have difficulty controlling him (they still punish him as a child) and without anybody noticing he wastes hours on the Internet seeing porn with a special fetish for mature obese women; the daughter, supposedly at university works as a stripper and they all smoke in secrete thinking the others quitted or don´t smoke. An apparent stranger comes into the family brought by Vince from the prison facility where he works; this stranger is in fact Vince´s son, and apart from Vince nobody has a clue about this (even the inmate). This is Mike Leigh´s Secrets and Lies turned into to a witty comedy.

The screenplay is written, by the also director of the film Raymond De Felitta, with a great sense of humor and if at times the screenplay is predicable, it takes a good and ironic approach to the dynamic of a normal family - the people closer to us and that we love the most are the ones from whom we feel the need to keep more secrets. And this is almost inescapable: after years of living together, after the summation of all the small details that bother you, after the unavoidable quarrels bond to happen, everyone just tries the most to keep the balance between their desires and expectations and those of the other family members - lying becomes almost a necessity to ensure that everything doesn´t go off track. An adult character while addressing other states this explicitly at a certain point: I did not tell you the truth because I was afraid, the truth being in this case completely non-harming and innocent. This is the catch, after a while you start to lie about non-important stuff because you simply cannot deal anymore with a possible non-positive reaction from your other family members, which in turn cannot lead to a good result. The film uses the hidden truths to create a succession of misunderstandings that culminate in the street scene near the end of the movie, played against a road sign in the back that says End (the end of lies?).

From a directorial point a view we follow the story as it unfolds from a distance, exactly in the same way as the newly arrived stranger. He rapidly becomes aware of all the lying (because he is a stranger nobody bothers to hide anything from him), not knowing that he himself (and by analogy us in our lives) is part of the lies. Raymond De Felitta does a good job and manages to get good performances from the cast, keeping the film going at a good pace and with a good notion of timing, a requisite to make a comedy work. The acting classes scenes although not original are funny, as is the one when Vince goes to an audition for a Martin Scorsese movie (Vince is obviously an Italian descent). But the cherry on top of the cake is the first family meal after Vince´s incognito son is brought home - it is simply hilarious.

Andy Garcia is at his best and Ezra Miller in the part of Vince´s adolescent son has a noteworthy performance. The remaining cast, including Margulies, is in tone with the movie with Alan Arkin appearing briefly in a few scenes as the acting teacher.

City Island could have been braver - all characters are essentially good and are made into likable people. Perhaps the less convincing character is that of the Rizzo´s oldest son as he is to good be true: he seems structurally too integer and honest for someone abandoned twice (by the father and by an alcoholic mother) and involved in several thefts. That is actually the feeling present throughout the movie: even though the characters with their particularities are lying and hiding secrets from their love ones, the movie sort of glamorizes them and we never for once feel that what is happening is terrible wrong. This is a comedy I know, but at times characters just needed to be made a little more real.

Globally City Island is a well done comedy on family that you should see.