Found In Translation

Tetro
American Zoetrope Beauty
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

A ship docks in Buenos Aires and a young man decked out in a crisp white uniform disembarks and walks amongst the dark shadows of the city’s streets. He doesn’t speak the language. Holds no currency. He is a foreign man. He is surrounded by the sound. Don’t call him Al, call him Bennie (fresh, yet classic faced Alden Ehrenreich… more on him below), and whatever you do, don’t call Bennie’s long lost and now found brother anything but Tetro (a marvelously grumpy Vincent Gallo). Tetro isn’t so happy to see his brother and he’s in no real huge hurry to describe eggzactly why, other than the obvious fact that he wants nothing to do with his family, and in particular, their manipulative, impossible to please composer patriarch (Klaus Maria Brandauer, this time without an arcade filled with Centipede). While gloom and doom are the way of Tetro’s walk, there’s sunshine emitting from everyone else, from his girlfriend (the radiant Y tu mama Maribel Verdú) and his bohemian pals (including Motorcycle Diaries‘ energetic Rodrigo De la Serna and Almodóvar muse Carmen Maura… her part was originally suppose to be played by Almodóvar’s male muse, Javier Bardem), and the impressionable Bennie soaks it all up, maturing with every ray. This is juss the base of the cake, and the rest of the story is theatrical icing that’s too sweet and luscious to divulge, or to pass up on

Did we mention that this is Francis Ford Coppola‘s first original screenplay since 1974’s The Conversation, his second ever black & white feature (with splashes of color, and also about sibling rivalry) after Rumble Fish, and is easily beeslyily his finest work since The Rainmaker Jack Captain EO (double dare we say) Apocalypse Now? That’s wright folks, Coppola is EFFIN and TREFFEFFELIN back yo [note: we didn’t see his richard prior, Youth Without Youth], and finally pulling the spotlight away from his over-lauded daughter. Sum of you will disagree (the critics are already mixed) and find Tetro to be boring, pretentious, superfluous, or all three (even we felt a bit of each at times), but you cannot deny the effort and passion that he poured onto this gorgeous canvas, to make a more personal piece of work that’s an absolute treasure. It’s perhaps the greatestest student film ever made, which happens to be made by a true student of film. George Lucas has talked a good game about making flicks juss like this, but at this point in time he’s probably incapable of doing so (he may be ‘independent’, but he’s far from being an independent filmmaker). Coppola no longer has to prove anything to anyone (that’s the kinda carte blanche that The Godfathers give ya, even with all the crap he’s churned out beyond the mid-80s), yet like the subtitle of Lucas’ Episode IV, Tetro is putting on display a new hope. The force is strong with this one, and we certainly hope that Coppola’s empire keeps striking back

Mazel Toast: this hottie space is usually guy free, but why would we want to be free of this guy? Alden Ehrenreich looks like DiCaprio and Tom Brady’s lovechild, talks like Matt Damon, acts like he’s cooler than Chris Cooley, and is 100% awesome. if you need an eggcuse to see Tetro, he’s it. Alden’s discovery as an actor is the stuff of Hollywood urban legend (ala Lana Turner). supposedly he appeared in a home movie that played at a Bat Mitzvah that happened to be attended by none other than Steven Spielberg, who was so taken by the heartthrob’s performance that he got em a screen test with the DreamWorks casting peeps. the rest, as they sorta say, is history… in the making

bi the gay, is this really his voice on Mazel Tov Cocktail? sadly it’s NOT the starmaking Bat Mitzvah vid, which we would die and thigh to see

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Tetro opens today in NY/LA only, and elsewhere, elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…