Release Date (UK) – 23rd July 2010
Certificate (UK) – 12A
Country – USA
Director – Raymond De Felitta
Runtime – 104 mins
Starring – Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, Steven Strait
City Island’s title refers to a little known village in the New York Bronx that is an actual island, complete with its own fishing community and customs. The film is full of iconic shots of its beautiful landscape, so is certain to add a major boost to their tourist numbers.
This gentle indie drama focuses around the lives of a dysfunctional family who all keep secrets from each other. Father Vince (Garcia) is a prison guard that harbours a secret desire to become an actor, but wife Joyce (Margulies) is convinced he’s cheating on her when he sneaks off to acting classes. Elsewhere, daughter Vivian (Dominik García-Lorido) has dropped out of college and is working as a stripper and son Vince Jr (Ezra Miller) has a secret passion for overweight women. When Vince mysteriously brings home former prison inmate Tony (Strait) to stay with them, the family’s secrets and lies all begin to slowly unravel.
- City Island: Andy Garcia
The narrative starts of agonizingly slowly but this is simply so that we become enveloped in the day to day life of this family. It soon picks up, and the jokes begin to flow effortlessly – one tracking shot stands out as both beautifully crafted and hilarious as the camera coasts over the house to show the mother, father and son all secretly smoking out of separate windows to hide their addictions from each other. The emotional involvement is so well crafted that when Vince goes for an audition we find ourselves desperately rooting for him to do well and get the part.
Andy Garcia has a great emotional range, showing his internal struggle to tell his wife of his ambitions and feelings. At the same time, he’s also adept at playing the role of the tough prison guard, loving father, and acting-at-acting. Margulies and Strait also give credible and heartfelt honest performances, but its young Ezra Miller as Vince Jr. who really shines as in insolent teenager who delivers some hilarious backchat lines. Alan Arkin also gets a brief role as Vince’s acting teacher, and his presence combined with the dysfunctional theme recalls Little Miss Sunshine, a film that City Island easily trumps in the comedic sense but is also just as tenderly heart warming.
City Island is one of the first films of 2010 to really stand out and is already is a great comedy – definitely worth a trip to the cinema for.
