SUNDANCE 2015: Capone looks at two unusual love stories: Grand Jury Prize Winner ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL and Saoirse Ronan in BROOKLYN!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago. I still have a few titles left to review from the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Here are a couple of great excellent selections that I caught while I was in Park City, both of which find the value of telling sweet, unconventional love stories, without choking us with sugar. Enjoy…


ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL
One of the prevailing conversations at Sundance this year was that there was no one hugely anticipated, as there was last year with titles like WHIPLASH, BOYHOOD, or LIFE ITSELF. This being my first year, I was actually excited by this prospect because that meant that filmgoers and critics alike had to take a few chances and be ready to make a discovery. And while I certainly walked away with four or five titles that I’m extremely excited for you to see in the coming year (hopefully), perhaps the most unexpected triumphs of the festival is a film with one of the worst titles, ME AND EARLY AND THE DYING GIRL, which ended up deservedly winning the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) and the Audience Award (U.S. Dramatic).

And while I never comment on such things, I was excited to watch this work and see the commercial appeal (apparently so did Fox Searchlight, which picked it up for distribution on the day it premiered). I only mention this because it actually thrills me that a film like this could be a hit. It’s small, quirky, hilarious at times, and deals with genuine emotions in a way so rarely seen, certainly in films about teenagers. Working from a fully charged screenplay by Jesse Andrews (based on his novel), director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (who cut his teeth on multiple episodes of “Glee,” “American Horror Story,” and one other feature, the recent remake of THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN) comes up with something of a new visual language for high school-set movies, complete with inventive graphics, animation and a series of very funny amateur remakes of art-house classics.

But that’s just window dressing for a uniquely compelling story about Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann), a social outcast who makes these strange little movies with his sole friend Earl (Ronald Cyler II). Greg is forced by his mother (Connie Britton, interestingly married to a mellowed-out Nick Offerman) to befriend fellow student Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who has just been diagnosed with leukemia. The relationship doesn’t exactly take off like a rocket, but after some time, the pair start to find their common ground and settle into a tentative, yet comfortable friendship. They become so close, in fact, that Greg is determined to make a special film just for her before she gets much sicker.

Far from a meet-cute story, ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL takes the time to watch both of its leads slowly remove themselves from their comfort zones, complete with witty comebacks and a healthy cynicism, and settle into substantial exchanges with another human being that are actually going to have a lasting impact of both. This isn’t a teenage love story, but it absolutely is a tale of two people who find someone else to love them in a protective and abundantly kind way. And of course, the second we start to find ourselves wanting to hang with these two forever, Rachel’s illness takes a turn for the worse, and the film enters a realm that no one on either side of the screen is prepared (it’s right there in the title, folks).

Peppered with supporting performances from an all-around great cast, including Jon Bernthal as a teacher who allows Greg and Earl to watch great movies in his office; Molly Shannon as Olivia’s inappropriately flirty mother; and most shockingly, a grown-up Bobb’e J. Thompson (ROLE MODELS) as Earl’s trash-talking older brother, ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL takes familiar elements from teen comedies and find inventive ways of presenting them and making them feel fresh and alive. Ultimately, however, it’s the film’s emotional components that are going to simultaneously lift your soul and crush your heart. Led by the tremendous trio of Mann, Cooke and Cyler, this is a film that will linger in your mind and tear ducts long after you see it.


BROOKLYN
Look at it as the lighter side of THE IMMIGRANT, the new film from director John Crowley (INTERMISSION, BOY A, CLOSED CIRCUIT), BROOKLYN, tells the story of young Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), an Irish lass who boldly leaves the safe and predictable life in her mother’s home for a new life in 1950s New York City. Although her biggest hardships in the Brooklyn boarding house she’s staying in (run by Julie Walters) are being homesick and having an overly strict boss (played by Jessica Pare, from “Mad Men”) at her retail job, all seems to be made easier for her to endure when she meets a young Italian fellow named Tony (Emory Cohen, from A PLACE BEYOND THE PINES) and the two start to fall in love.

Working from an elegant Nick Hornby adaptation of the novel by Colm Tóibín, director Crowley takes his time building up a sense of time and place, without rushing us through the story or getting us buried in the politics or events of the time, which have little bearing on this very personal story. While it’s clear this romance is important to Eilis, she has something of a vague plan for her life in American, which is completely upended when she receives rather devastating news from home that requires her to return to her hometown. In a sign of commitment to return, Eilis agrees to marry Tony just before she leaves for what she thinks will be a couple of weeks.

Naturally, personal commitments and a sense of duty to those who were good to her and her mother keep her in Ireland for much longer, and she ends up getting involved in a heavy flirtation with Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson), who has no idea she’s married—nor does anyone else, since Eilis conveniently doesn’t mention it to anybody. Perhaps a bit too obviously, Hornby uses Eilis’ being torn between two men as a metaphor for her being torn between two lands, but that doesn’t take away from the complicated decision she must make, and Ronan carries it off beautifully and gracefully, playing Eilis as someone who alternates between utterly fragile and ferociously unbreakable. My biggest regret while watching BROOKLYN was missing the screenings of Ronan’s other Sundance offering STOCKHOLM, PENNSYLVANIA.

BROOKLYN allows us to share in Eilis’ longing for both country and love, but she also makes it clear that she doesn’t need either to feel fulfilled. This is a film about the tribulations of the heart that manages to stay unsentimental by simply laying out the dilemma and allowing our heroine a few extra moments to contemplate her options as well as her desires. In addition to Ronan’s positively piercing work, I was particularly impressed with Emory Cohen’s humble take on Tony, a plumber with a large, obnoxious family and more soul than anyone else in this movie. Throw in a little Jim Broadbent as a priest that advises young Eilis, and you’ve got yourself a nice little cheek pinch of a movie that has a full appreciation for what a love story should be.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter