After pretty much slamming one of the flagship “Mumblecore” films, “Hannah Takes The Stairs,” we’d be remiss to not mention we saw the, more diffident, yet better mumblecore effort, “Quiet City” at its IFC debut this week.
A modest, ostensibly relationship story set in Park Slope, Brooklyn, ‘City,’ wasn’t nearly as funny as we think the filmmakers thought it was, but that wasn’t really the point. The characters were highly likeable, the actors were charming and the humble story didn’t try and overreach its grasp. It’s unassuming ambitions were about a duo that spent a random weekend (or few days together) and a tentative, yet subtle mutual attraction emerged. “Quiet City,” didn’t try and drop any grand statements and the ending was wisely ambiguous and all-of-a-sudden. And now we realize we’re sort sound like we’re celebrating this film for staying within some parameters of humility and non-ambition or something, but it really was well-executed and had some incredibly genuinely akward and natural performances. Time Out New York called it, “low-ordinance” and that sort of sums it up well.
Apparently the film wasn’t shot with any permits (go diy) and the actors “sort of” learned their lines to get a unaffected feel of the dialogue and gist of what they were supposed to say which really worked. The two leads also only met each other when they first started filming which added to the natural feel. “Quiet City” is already being readied for DVD (in what we believe we heard was) January of 2008 (and to be bundled with another muttercore film – feel free to correct us here).
So apologies to ‘Hannah.’ but “Quiet City” was a winner.
Postscript: Oh, and we were told that the film contained a bunch of Bob Dylan covers and we stupidly (and hilariously) didn’t realize that this was basically a dig at our obsessive Dylan coverage and or a belittiling enticement to come see the film. It really wasn’t the reason we came, but we laughed at ourselves right before the film started when we finally realized this was a blatant lie. Well played.
