Review of Sugar (2008) by Ashley T — 25 Apr 2009

Sugar is a young man from the Dominican Republic. Like so many others in his hometown, he is chasing a nearly impossible dream, to play baseball in the American Major Leagues, to help his family out of poverty. He gets his first big break when he is invited to spring training, and then lands in rural Iowa to play for a Kansas City farm team.

The film follows Sugar as he tries to adjust to his new life. Along with the pressures of the game and being the best, he is completely isolated from his family and friends back home. The language barrier is especially difficult to get over. He has trouble ordering food in a restaurant, and even though he wants to, and is encouraged by his incredibly patient host family, he can't carry a conversation at the dinner table.

Algenis Perez Soto delivers an inspired performance as Sugar, which is all the more remarkable considering he's never acted before. A former aspiring ballplayer himself, Soto was discovered by the filmmakers among six hundred others in auditions and scouting across the US and Dominican. We get to know Sugar on a profoundly intimate level, even with very little dialogue, thanks to Soto's expressive eyes and presence.

The rest of the cast is just as outstanding, it's hard to single out any one of them. Some are professionals, but many of the baseball players and smaller roles are actual prospective or former players rather than actors, which adds authenticity to the scenes on the field.

Writer-director team Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden have developed artistically since their feature debut, 2006's Half Nelson. Considering how great that film was, any improvement is most impressive. They have honed their skills just tiny bits here and there, but have maintained the overall style of their first film. They continue to use lots of focus pulls and vibrant colour, a nice touch that adds punch to their very naturalistic stories. Though with their storytelling talent, it's impossible for audiences to lose interest, it's still nice to have that little extra something that reminds us visually we are watching a real movie and not an amateur home video. It's kind of the opposite effect of the Dogme movement. As far as the writing is concerned, the script deftly avoids clichés and never goes where you expect it to.

Sugar is easily the best film of 2009 so far. I know it's only April, but it's going to be very difficult to top this one.