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This one's got character
Edie Falco sparkles in Sunshine State
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Jeet Thayil
John Sayles' new movie Sunshine State owes everything to Robert Altman's trademark technique. Altman, especially in Nashville, brought together a group of characters, made each one recognisable, surrounded the whole project with an air of improvisation and structured it around some sort of public event. In Sayles' case the event is a community festival.
His movie, ironically named Sunshine State, is a lament for the endangered wilds of a Florida that has been under siege by developers for three or so decades. The developers in Sunshine State are two rival teams of lowlifes out to take over a small island off the Florida coast by hook and mostly by crook. The main villain, of course, is a multinational corporation trying to turn beachfront property into a luxury resort.
Sayles' special achievement is that by the end of the film, his huge cast is as well known to us as our friends. That is no small feat considering the size of the cast. The characters include two middle-income families, one white and the other black. Both families have been living in the area for long enough to set down serious roots.
There is a troubled teen who likes to set fires (Bernard Alexander Lewis), a nomadic landscape architect whose life work is transforming pristine spots into eyesores (Timothy Hutton), a chamber of commerce busybody who is in charge of the festival (Mary Steenburgen), and her strange husband who is addicted to both gambling and attempted suicide.
There is Desiree (Angela Bassett), now settled elsewhere, and Marly (Edie Falco), who has inherited a restaurant and motel she is finding it hard to hold on to. They are daughters of the two families whose stories make up the engine that drives this movie.
Falco is a revelation. Most viewers know her from The Sopranos, where she is perfect as a mob mom. So convincing is the transformation that by the end of this movie it became difficult to remember her as Carmela Soprano. Falco's is a star turn and this role should make her famous.
In Sunshine State she is a woman adrift, whose memory of working as a mermaid at a local aquarium is a sort of visual motif. There is a lovely scene in which Falco dives into the water and drifts in slow motion. She also gets some of the movie's best lines: "The important thing is to keep your smile even if you're drowning."
Sayles is very good with throwaway lines of dialogue that turn up like little gems. "Nature is overrated but we will miss it when it is gone," says one of a bunch of geezers playing golf. The movie begins and ends with the golfers who punctuate their game with bon mots.
Critics love to say Sayles is a better writer than he is a filmmaker. Well, he is a fine writer, the dialogue is crisp and witty, not to mention sarcastic and biting. But he is a better filmmaker: the actors sparkle. And though the story rambles, Sayles manages to turn this into an advantage rather than a drawback. He makes it seem as if the film is setting its own leisurely pace as it meanders through the lives of its characters.