Tribeca '22 Highlights: Official Competition, Leo Grande, Vengeance

After covid-19 forced industry-wide shutdowns in movie production and distribution and personal caution largely shut down my desire to venture into movie theaters over the last couple of years, 2022 has seen something of a resurgence of activity and interest. As with travel, we have not yet returned to a pre-pandemic normal, but we seem to be moving in that direction. And so, clutching a handful of facemasks and promising to be careful, I ventured forth a couple weeks ago to once again attend the Tribeca Film Festival in my favorite city, New York. 

I attended the festival for six full days and saw 17 feature length films, 5 short films and one of the hour-long ”Tribeca Talks”.  So, all in all, I was pretty busy. Although one full-length film was so dull, I left before it concluded, of the remaining sixteen features, eleven were in the ‘very good’ to ‘really remarkable’ categories, and the other five were more than decent and worth my time, if not particularly special. If I can see eleven quite wonderful movies in six days, that is a pretty great week. Plus, I’ve been back in California for over a week now and - fingers crossed - I seem to have dodged the dreaded disease.

Today, I want to provide short reviews of three films that are already available or will soon be released that I think you might enjoy. I’ll be back to discuss some of the other highlights in a subsequent post. The three movies are

Official Competition

Good Luck to You Leo Grande

        Vengeance

Official Competition is, in my opinion, a must see picture – it has been called a masterclass - for fans of great comic acting and superlative acting in general. It stars three brilliant actors: Oscar winner Penelope Cruz, Oscar nominee and Cannes best actor winner Antonio Banderas and award-winning Argentine actor, director and author Oscar Martinez – all in great form. this picture is not about world events or social concerns, it is not aesthetically groundbreaking, it is not mysterious or spiritual, but it is a very accomplished, highly entertaining comedy that wound up being one of my favorite movies of the festival

Cruz plays a brilliant and eccentric auteur director, Lola, with a mane of flaming red hair, hired by an aging billionaire (hoping to gild his own reputation) to make a film of a bestselling book (that he has never read). The book - and movie within the movie -  is about two rival brothers and their love-hate relationship. Lola hires two lauded actors with their own love-hate relationship: Félix (Banderas), an internationally famous actor of the tell-me-what to-do-and-I’ll-do-it camp, who loves being famous for the money and women it provides, and Iván (Martinez), a celebrated stage actor, scholar, teacher, and Method purist who disdains commercialism. 

Watching these three extreme characters try to rehearse together, with Lola manipulating (and flustering) the two prima donna men, and each of the actors trying to prod and one-up the other, as sparks fly and egos swell, is both hilarious and wonderfully instructive. 

Official Competition is currently being rolled out in a limited theatrical release in select cities.

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Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a sweet, funny, touching film aimed, quite frankly, at the boomer generation. It stars Emma Thompson, truly one of the great actresses of her generation, with a resume of wonderfully acted and (often) commercially successful films second to none (other than perhaps that Streep woman). Outside of her role as Sybil Trelawney in three Harry Potter films, Thompson is probably best known for dramatic roles in such productions as Fortunes of War (1987), Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993), Sense and Sensibility (1995)(which she also wrote), and Saving Mr Banks (2013). Less well known is that she is a terrific comic actress, having started her career in sketch comedy with the likes of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.

All these talents come into play in her portrayal of the upright, repressed, recently widowed schoolteacher Nancy Stokes in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a sex comedy/drama which premiered at Tribeca. The story commences when Nancy answers the door of her London hotel room to admit Leo Grande, a sex worker she has engaged in a desperate attempt to break from her overly-constrained and unfulfilled life – one in which she never had an enjoyable sexual experience, much less an orgasm. Of course, as soon as Leo knocks, Nancy starts having second thoughts. “What was I thinking?” she wonders in comic yet understandable alarm. As it turns out, Leo (Daryl McCormack - outstanding) is a bright, charming, handsome young man with a patience and grace well suited to his profession. 

With Leo’s help, Nancy eventually settles down, and the … um … action proceeds more or less according to plan. Thanks to a sublime script and Thompson’s brilliance, much of this is very funny indeed while also sweet and marvelously touching. Nancy is not the sort to leave such interaction at the transactional level, however, and her persistence leads to moments of emotional drama, adding well earned dimension to Leo Grande’s character and the overall narrative. In the press, much has been made about Emma Thompson’s undeniable bravery for appearing nude in the movie. The important thing is that it works. In fact, I think this actually elevates the power of her performance and the importance of the film as a whole.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is screening at select theaters nationwide and now streaming exclusively on Hulu.

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Vengeance is the first feature film written, directed, and starring B.J. Novak (The Office). It’s a genre blending comedy/satire neo-noir mystery in which Novak plays a guy called Ben Manolowitz a Harvard educated writer-journalist-podcaster for an NPR-like production company. He is a smug, young, ambitious New York cosmopolitan, who believes the world is his oyster – not that he has that much to show for it, other than a string of short-lived love affairs and one night stands. He and his drinking buddy John Mayer (uncredited) seem to like it that way.  “One hundred percent”, they like to say.

But one night, Ben gets a call from a guy named Ty in West Texas, identifying himself as the brother of Ben’s girlfriend, Abby. Between sobs, Ty informs Ben that Abby has just died, and it would mean so much to her and the family for Ben to get his ass down there right away for the funeral. Since Ben doesn’t have a girlfriend, it takes him a few moments to recall a singer named Abby that he slept with a few times. Ty must be talking about her. The weirdness of the situation, gives Ben an idea: going there and embedding with the Ty and Abby’s family could yield some interesting material for a podcast about so-called real Americans. So he goes. 

Ty (Boyd Holbrook) meets Ben at the airport and quickly informs him that although the official cause of death is a drug overdose; he knows that in fact Abby was murdered. Ty wants Ben to help identify who done it, and then help him wreak vengeance on the bad guy. Ben demurs, but this murder insinuation adds a new layer of interest to his podcast idea. He tells his producer, Eloise (Issa Rae) that investigating the mystery of Abby’s death will enable him to pick up a lot of local color. The piece could be called “Dead White Girl”.  Eloise asks him what evidence Ty has that Abby was murdered? “Nothing” is the reply; “that’s what makes it such a great story.” 

Meeting Abby’s family - all of whom somehow believe that she loved Ben and vice versa – Ben’s initial impression is what we’d expect: stereotypical cornpone types. But it’s Ben who’s doing the typecasting, and as the story develops to become complicated and much more interesting, tables are turned. Ben is the fish out of water and in actuality, he may be the simpleton rather than then other way around; Ben certainly feels this way. The mechanism leading to this attitude adjustment is mostly pretty funny; also revealing in a way that most such stories are not.

It's not exactly news that there’s a lot of drug use and abuse in the hinterland; deaths like Abby’s are apparently not at all unusual in West Texas. As Ben noses around, law enforcement – local police, sheriff, Texas Rangers, federal border patrol, etc. – have no interest in investigating. Is this ineptitude or a coverup? The mystery grows deeper and darker. 

Ben consults the bigshot in the community, a music producer called Quentin Sellars (Ashton Kushner in a great star turn), flamboyantly dressed in a white outfit, punctuated by a long rockstar scarf and the de rigueur cowboy hat and boots.  Sellars is the guy who not only knows most everybody, he knows everybody’s business.He explains to Ben how things work down here, at the same time sharing his cynical worldview: ”The problem isn’t that these people aren’t smart, the problem is that they are,” the American dream is a sham, there’s no place for idealism. The true morality, he says, is power - every man for himself. Gee thanks, Quentin!

As the filmmaker, Novak makes some rookie mistakes here and there, but this is nonetheless a remarkable debut. He knows how to tell a story that draws us in and keeps us interested, how to upend our expectations and ultimately surprise us. He has created - through his writing, directing and acting – a protagonist that is compelling, who is changed by his experience during the course of the narrative, and, most of all, whom we come to like. His ensemble cast adds color and depth as well.  

Vengeance opens in theaters nationwide July 29, 2022. Streaming date unknown at this time.

Grade: B+