Also this issue:

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign
In M. Night Shyamalan's latest, aliens keep touching our crop.
-Cindy Fuchs

Behind the Screens
The soft touch of My Wife Is an Actress trumps Full Frontal’s crudity.
-Sam Adams

new

continuing

repertory film

August 1- 7, 2002

movies

The Punk Moms' Club

legend of zelda: Eleanor Hutchins<i> </i>faces her

past and her future.

legend of zelda: Eleanor Hutchins faces her past and her future.

Starving artists hit their 30s in Margarita Happy Hour.

Margarita Happy Hour

by Sam Adams

Margarita Happy HourWritten and directed by Ilya Chaiken

A Passport Pictures release

Opens Friday at The Roxy recommended

“I’m sick of circles,” bemoans Zelda (Eleanor Hutchins). “I want straight lines.” On the cusp of 30 and with a 2-year-old girl to boot, Zelda is stuck between two worlds: the chemically enabled “starving-artist social circuit” of her 20s and whatever unseen future lies before her. As she’s done for years, she meets regularly with a group of female friends to suck down brightly colored margaritas (red, blue, yellow, but never green) at a Brooklyn restaurant, but where they once discussed upcoming parties and whether there might be any good coke there, now they talk about applying for Medicaid, caring for their children and whether it’s time to get out of the city.

Like the recent stories of Love and Rockets' Jaime Hernandez, Margarita Happy Hour is an almost frighteningly clear-eyed look at what happens when punk rock dreams collide with grown-up obligations. In one awkwardly filmed but still telling sequence, the happy hour posse looks to the next table and sees themselves a few years in the past; they comment on their younger selves' foolish freedom, while the younger table looks with horror at the stroller-burdened spectacle beside them. Happy Hour slips back and forth in time, often without warning, and the effect can be a little jarring. The gaps in time aren't great enough for the characters to look significantly different, but their situations are changing rapidly. Luckily, the film settles into a more manageable rhythm, and it's possible to gather what's taking place when.

There's no condemnation of -- indeed, more than a little affection for -- Zelda's misspent youth, just the slightly grudging acknowledgement that it might be time to move on. That means severing ties, of course, the strongest being to Max (Larry Fessenden), the father of "little Z," and Natali (Holly Ramos), a close friend of Zelda's who's recently kicked drugs and alcohol and is having trouble finding her place in the world without them. They're all crammed together into Max's house, where loud parties seem to break out at a moment's notice and the baby sleeps in a cramped room just off the dancefloor. Though Max is a combative drunk with a Kerouac fixation and an aversion to child-rearing, and Natali's just a mess, the film doesn't elevate Zelda at their expense; she may be wiser, but only just a bit. In flashbacks, writer-director Ilya Chaiken reminds us of the good old days, the nourishing friendships now tainted with the scent of the morning after. While what Natali wistfully calls Zelda's "mommy friends" urge her to move upstate with them, Zelda struggles with abandoning the lifestyle that once pulled her in so strongly, though it now means raising a baby in poverty and turning out spot illustrations for Screw.

Margarita Happy Hour is a leaky vessel at times, but the film's rough-hewn look only enhances its authenticity; if you've been anywhere near the kind of scene Chaiken depicts, you'll be startled at how right it feels, especially given most filmmakers' pathetic attempts to capture similar environments. (And a heartfelt thank-you to Chaiken and crew for sticking with film; video would have robbed the movie of its gritty warmth.) All the technique in the world can't give a movie heart, but if it rings true, nothing else seems to matter.

Browse The
March 3, 2005
Issue

Join the
City Paper
Mailing List

Ask. Answer. Learn. Share.

LOVE LOUNGE




	search citypaper.net