Perhaps one day a filmmaker will make a movie that depicts South Philly as fun-loving and fancy-free. But Tom Quinn’s keenly observed The New Year Parade isn’t that picture.
Perhaps one day a filmmaker will make a movie that depicts South Philly as fun-loving and fancy-free. Actually, they have: it’s called Strut!, a documentary about the Mummers. But Tom Quinn’s keenly observed The New Year Parade—set among the downcast members of the Mummer’s brethren, the South Philly String Band—isn’t that picture.
That’s not a knock; even the area’s big splashy Hollywood inspirational sports weepie, Invincible, wound up spending over half its length in a dingy bar among hard-drinkin’, hard-smokin’ depressives. The New Year Parade, too, is set among the chronically downcast, but at least that’s less a syndrome of their neighborhood than because of the divorce saga at the film’s center.
Greg Lyons leads a cast of mostly non-pros—the terrific local theater actor Tobias Segal being a glaring exception—as the son of the String Band’s team captain (Andrew Conway), who has recently caught his wife mid-tryst. Lyons, who plays banjo under the father he doesn’t quite like, is mostly able to stand tall amidst the kerfuffle, even acquiring a tryst-turned-girlfriend (Irene Longshore). Meanwhile the split affects his teen sister (Jennifer-Lynn Welsh) in both subtle and decidedly unsubtle ways.
Quinn’s narrative hits many of the expected divorce-drama beats, but he doesn’t hit them with the expected force. Major developments happen off-screen or are simply inferred; when the mother, who has been suspecting forgiveness from her husband, is unexpectedly served divorce papers, her initial reaction is calm, borderline bemused. One jump cut later and she’s quietly bawling, but the cumulative effect remains powerful because of the odd but recognizably human way she processes the shock.
But more often The New Year Parade is obsessed with details far more mundane. Employing a style that teeters on documentary, Quinn combines mumbly improv work from his non-actors with off-hand details, his handheld digital camera endlessly picking up shots that endlessly establish both place and mood. Oftentimes a scene will be made of a battering ram of tiny close-ups or shots of people who just happen to be in the same bar, warehouse or street.
Quinn also shot and edited his feature debut, and The New Year Parade feels written with both the camera and the editing program. True, there are far, far too many music montages, but there’s no denying Quinn’s almost scary budding talent. B
Article:
The Messenger
Article:
Rashomon
Article:
The Blind Side
Article:
2012
Article:
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men
Article:
(Untitled)
Article:
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
Article:
The Maid
