Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Film: Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

'Guy And Madeline': A New Wave Spin On The Musical
by Pat Dowell
November 9, 2010

Shot on the streets of Boston in black and white by a 25-year-old director, Guy and Madeline Sitting on a Park Bench has easily made it onto several 10-best lists — that is, lists of the 10 best films that did not get into theaters in 2009. But after two years in production and more than a year on the festival circuit, the film that critics have hailed as a fresh blend of the 1930s Hollywood musical and the French New Wave cinema of the 1960s has finally opened to audiences in New York.

[...] The unforced, matter-of-fact style of the movie is just one of the things that inspired critic Amy Taubin to write about it in Film Comment and designate it the best undistributed film of 2009 on Indiewire; in Artforum she called it one of the year's best, period. Taubin says the film gives us a glimpse of life around Boston's music schools, just as the films of Jean-Luc Godard and other New Wave directors in the 1960s gave us a glimpse of Paris neighborhoods while breaking all of the rules of conventional moviemaking. [READ FULL ARTICLE]