HuffPost Entertainment has landed in Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, which kicked off Thursday night with the premieres of the new Nina Simone documentary and the comedy “The Bronze.” We’re in the thick of Day 2, with the inaugural press screening of “Z for Zachariah” this afternoon and the world premiere of “The End of the Tour” on Friday night. In the meantime, here’s what we’ve seen so far:
“The Bronze”
Written by Melissa Rauch and Winston Rauch
Directed by Bryan Buckley
The opening film at last year’s Sundance was “Whiplash,” which is now a Best Picture nominee. Don’t expect the same fate for “The Bronze.” “Big Bang Theory” star Melissa Rauch does her best to keep it ticking, but there’s not much gold to be found in this raunchy comedy. Playing Hope Greggory, a salty Olympic gymnast who managed to win the bronze medal despite a career-ending ankle injury, Rauch dons an acerbic Ohio accent that will make you chuckle even when the script isn’t that funny — which is most of the time. We first meet Hope masturbating to footage of her Olympic competition, and the rest of the film is like a clock chugging toward the feel-good lessons we know this remorselessly self-absorbed character will learn.
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There are no traces of the hypersensitive Brooklynite Abbott played on “Girls” — his titular character does live in New York, but his aimlessness and somewhat aggressive proclivities make him all id. Opening with his father’s funeral, we learn James was unaware his dad had remarried. His parents’ separation doesn’t do much to curb the grief his mother (Cynthia Nixon) feels, and neither does the cancer that’s flared up in her body again, requiring James to share a care schedule with nurses. We watch as James attempts to get his life in order, which is all his mother really wants from her unemployed and unreliable son. To describe this film as an unconventional coming-of-age would be too empty. There are no lessons to be learned, only a self-destructiveness that must be realized. Abbott, preparing for a Kit Harington lookalike contest, is the perfect actor to do it. Soft eyes meet rough edges, particularly opposite the fragile performance of an increasingly frail Nixon. Their rapport as mother and son is a romance that Mond captures without a hint of preachiness. A vulnerable scene toward the film’s end, in which James describes the future his mother likely won’t live to see her son exact, requires a great deal of nuance from the two actors. Like the entire film, they master it.
Mond’s fondness for extreme closeups can distract from scenes’ potency now and then, but he knows how to administer gritty ambiance while retaining the film’s many comedic touches and overarching humanity. The thing to marvel at is the film’s simplicity, though. During a vacation James takes to escape the travails of city life, he and his friends drop acid and wander through a shoe store, gazing at the florescent sights with the awe of hypnotized zombies. It is an uproarious moment, and one of the most realistic LSD trips depicted onscreen, partly because of the uncomplicated acting — Abbott plays drunk and/or stoned quite convincingly — and partly because Mond knows where to place the camera so that the characters’ whimsical interactions tell as much of a story as their heavier moments. It’s one of many memorable scenes in a fantastic film about wading through life’s chapters.
