Charlotte Sometimes
Matinee
Nominated for two 2003 Independent Spirit awards, Charlotte Sometimes is one of those films who will suffer by being released direct to video, so please make an attempt to find it and see it. It should be available now. After viewing the film (and several others as my readers might have noticed) I still found myself coming back to it in my mind, mainly thinking about the main character; this film resonated somewhere within me in a way that movies I review promptly sometimes have no opportunity to do. Take it as you will, but to me it says, I will want to watch this again.
It is the story of a heart-tugging love triangle between a reclusive auto mechanic (Michael Idemoto), his mixed-message-prone tenant and unrequited crush (Eugenia Yuan) and a mysterious girl he meets in a bar (Jacqueline Kim). The three circle each other in frustrating ways, with a fourth character (Yuan's boyfriend) providing confusing and contradictory plot moments.
Asian-Americans in American film rarely get to take center stage without white make up or a katana in hand. Charlotte Sometimes is a universal story of longing, furstration, connection, and love that happens to be playing out from the perspective of Asian-Americans; like The Best Man, it is the story and not the demographic of the cast that sucks you in, but it is still a different perspective than that to which we are usually treated.
While Charlotte Sometimes has occasional hiccups of story or character continuity (and the title you will have to work out by reading the box), the actors play their roles with such realness, such sincerity and conviction, that the film sticks with you. Idemoto in particular has a quiet gentleness in his voice and manner, his deliberate and restrained actions, and his general response to these women. I find myelf thinking of him often after watching the film, and in a way I feel I know his character very well. When I allude to character continuity, I am thinking of one line late in the film that he delivers. By the time we get to this point, I felt I knew him so well that I knew he would never say such a thing. This is a critique of the line, but overall a compliment to the character development.
A few details about Kim's enigmatic character are handled clumsily (and it is only much later that you find out she should be enigmatic in the first place), and if you miss a few lines of dialogue (which would be easy to do because they mixed Cody Chestnutt's music far too loud above the talking) you might really get turned around. Keep your volume button handy. However, I nitpick, because over all, the interrelationships were intriguing and interesting, the performances were very strong, and you just have to be impressed with this little movie that could. Check it out.
-- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These reviews (c) 2003 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can check out previous reviews at: http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource
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