TIFF Review: Ryan Fleck And Anna Boden’s ‘Sugar’

It’s not a film that’s been talked about much or or anyone’s radar, really, but Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s “Sugar” has been one of our most eagerly anticipated indie films in a while. Mostly because the duo’s feature-debut “Half Nelson” starring Ryan Gosling was one of our favorite movies of 2006. Though it did appear to strong reviews at Sundance earlier this year, most the chatter surrounding the film has quieted down and one can presume that if it had to make the rounds at TIFF in the same year, it’s because no one is forking over the dough yet to buy or distribute the film which is a bit of a shame. Regardless. On to our review and thoughts.

“Half Nelson” deal with a lot of African-American culture in Brooklyn and “Sugar” centers on a Dominican baseball hopeful trying to make it in the U.S. and as we mentioned earlier, Fleck and Boden really seem to almost have an aversion to telling stories about white kids in love (or what you might expect from young, white 20-3o somethings) much to all our benefit.

The story chronicles the life of Miguel “Azucar” Santos as a DomRepublic baseball contender who is soon brought over to the United States with a few of his friends to play minor league ball and see if they can work their way up the ranks. There’s much of “Sugar” to praise, including its authenticity, naturalism and the way it can turn on a dime and use sound, music and silence to transport the audience into a moving and stylized moment, but we’re not sure we were as amazed by it as everyone else was (people seemed to be totally over the moon about it). It was certainly one of our most anticipated films (we built our TIFF schedule around seeing it early), but it suffered from a restless middle section it didn’t effect me as emotionally as we hoped it would. Much like “Linha De Passe,” which we saw earlier in the day, the directors could have amped up the narrative with conflicts and obstacles and or one-note villains (they wisely resisted the urge to make the middleman character an profiteer and making the white coach an unsympathetic asshole) and they should be applauded for avoiding these trappings, but we wonder if they’re at the expense of drama sometimes. Maybe it was just too many baseball scenes in the middle that really didn’t do anything for us. In fact, the film can be put into three simple acts; the Dominican Republic, the minor leagues and Iowa and New York and it’s the bookends of the film that are the strongest (honestly, we kind of wished they never left the DR as those scenes were so beautiful and strikingly honest with lovely cinematic flourishes).

That’s not hate, but we had high expectations. These two are masters when they feel like it though. There’s a pitching breakdown scene that was utterly marvelous and showcased the amazing eye and editing techniques this duo has. Not sure we loved it as much as “Half Nelson,” but this team still has lots of inspiring cinema left to make in their auspicious career. And man, they always choose the most amazing cinematographers to lens their lovely looking films. [B]