Emilia Jones gains attention as 2021 Sundance winner and eventual Best Picture Oscar star end, This year should continue to be praised, because she not only starred in cat people, but also wonderland The world premiere was held today in Park City.
Sofia Coppola is lead producer on American Diorama, Andrew Durham’s feature film debut, a haunting film that doesn’t Too likely to keep viewers hooked. The end of this adaptation of Alysia Abbott’s moving 2013 memoir about growing up in San Francisco with her widowed father, when gay pride was rife and the AIDS epidemic looming, brought me to tears. This is not a panorama of what happened in the 70s and 80s, but a personal coming-of-age story about the unconventional relationship between a gay single father and the daughter he must raise alone after the tragic death of his wife.
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While it’s set in the time and circumstances, at its core it’s a universal story about family, love, being true to yourself, and being there for each other when it matters most.
The book and film tell the story of Alysia, who lost her mother in a car accident in the early 70s and moved to San Francisco with her father Steve (Scoot McNairy) around 1974, where he could pursue his poetry writing career. dream, and live locally. Gay men in the closet. Of course, some people, including Alysia’s grandmother (Geena Davis), don’t think that’s naturally the best way to raise a child (Alysia Jr., played by Nessa Dougherty), and sometimes Alysia doesn’t either, and now There’s no mom, and her new biracial family consists of her father’s boyfriends, but Steve is loyal to her and determined to make it all work out. This is their story of a single father trying to raise a child on his own, and that child trying to find her place in her “father’s” life and a whole new world. She avoids all of this while visiting her grandmother and is naturally curious about everything, making her an undeniable charmer.
About halfway through, that role is taken over by Jones, as Alicia, now in high school, joins her own friends in making fun of her father for “likes men.” There were growing pains, and she even lashed out at her situation one day herself, calling her father and then-boyfriend Charlie “fags” when he left the room.Charlie (Adam Lambert) says, “Stupid high school friends might say things like that, but Alicia you know better than anyone“. As a matter of fact, she does, and warm family ties are the most important thing, even though she plans to go to NYU for college, build her own life, and even spend a semester in France, where she finds love with a beautiful French boy. When Steve tells her to come home and help him through , she had no choice. She had to be by his side, just as he was by her side.
Much of the film is primarily snapshots through time, showing the bond between father and daughter, filled with happiness and tragedy, frustration and understanding. Jones and Dougherty, both actresses who play Alysia at different ages, are excellent, Dougherty is a real find and truly irresistible as a young Alysia. McNairy is terrific, especially in a poignant scene with his daughter as the AIDS epidemic starts to catch up to him. The supporting cast also includes Cody Fern, who is as good as Eddie, who lives in the attic with them, and Maria Bakalova, who makes an authentic impression in a scene at the pharmacy, as Lan Burt does the same in his brief scene as Charlie. Davis is as popular as ever, but her role doesn’t matter.
The producers are Coppola, Durham, Megan Carlson, Siena Oberman, Greg Lauritano and Laure Sudrea. It’s an acquired title at Sundance.
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