Screengrab editor emeritus Bilge Ebiri reports from the frontlines of Park City.
It’s become par for the course to use words like “electrifying” and “explosive” when discussing dramatic debuts at Sundance – directorial or otherwise – but director Cruz Angeles’s engagingly acted, beautifully made competition title Don’t Let Me Drown comes from a place of such understated honesty that breathless adjectives feel cheap around it. And yet I’d be lying if my heart didn’t race from the sheer joy of discovery as I watched it.
On the surface, it’s a tale we’ve probably seen in umpteen manifestations before. Lalo (E.J. Bonilla), a Mexican teen, and Stefanie (Gleendilys Inoa), a Dominican girl, fall in puppy love in inner-city Brooklyn. Her father is stern and abusive and doesn’t want her seeing anybody; his mother doesn’t like the idea of him dating a black girl. Add to that a post-9/11 backdrop (his father was a janitor at the WTC and is now working cleanup at Ground Zero, her older sister was killed during the attack) and the fact that Lalo’s best friend Jonathan (Dennis Kellum) is also Stefanie’s cousin, and Angeles seems to be setting himself up a minefield of cliches that no mere mortal filmmaker can navigate.
Such a cursory description does the film no justice, however, because Angeles has a soft touch that feels decidedly old school. This isn’t one of those films where handheld cameras wander the streets of Brooklyn focusing and refocusing on an actor’s ear. The shots feel composed, like someone actually thought about where to place the camera before starting a scene. Little bits of character detail intrude on the frame or the background; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Angeles is a fan of Italian Neorealism, as he manages a similar kind of classical precision here, one that manages to preserve a character’s dignity while still allowing a story to emerge. That’s not to say, however, that the film lacks spontaneity. Indeed, every exchange brings with it a small moment of surprise – an unexpected line of dialogue, an unforeseen narrative development, or maybe just a glance – that the film, for all the indie portent of its plot, feels like the freshest thing in years. It’s perhaps too small to be some kind of breakout hit, but it’d be a crime if it didn’t get a proper release.
