Review of Quiet City (2007) by Natasha G — 18 Jun 2008

I really don't know what to think of this film. One one hand I really love the character relationship progression. Jamie travels from Atlanta to Brooklyn to meet up with her friend, but gets lost. She meets up with a stranger named Charlie who helps her find her way to where she was supposed to meet her friend, but her friend is not there and not answering her phone. The rest of the movie follows the two as they go from strangers to acquaintances to friends in around 24 hours. The movie is dialogue based, similar in fact to Before Sunrise in that sense, as well as the whole strangers meeting and talking their way through 24 hours, except in this case things don't progress to the romantic levels of Before Sunrise. The film is actually a part of the mumblecore film movement which employs a very low-budget production where non-professional actors are used in improvised scripts where the focus is on personal relationships. On the other hand, the improvised dialogue, especially in the beginning when the two characters are first talking, although very realistic, is often boring, irritating and heavy-handed and can distract the viewer from what they should be hearing.

Essentially, Quiet City is so realistic in the way the characters behave and interact, that it could very well have been a documentary about two strangers getting to know each other over the course of a day. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I found it nice for a change and I'll look further into the mumblecore genre.