Miscommunications lead to family frustration in Andy Garcia’s winning comedy City Island.
City Island mines laughs from family dysfunction
At its heart City Island is all about communication something the Rizzos the family at the centre of the film aren’t particularly good at. They’re all aware that the lines of communication within their idyllic home in the titular Bronx fishing village are near-crisis levels but the years of keeping things to themselves have left the family incapable of taking the first step towards fixing anything. Instead they each harbour their personal secrets which only adds to the strain.
Patriarch Vince (Andy Garcia) tells his wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies) that he attends a weekly poker game when in fact he’s taking an acting class. Joyce for her part is convinced Vince is being unfaithful and is eager to fight fire with fire. Their daughter Vivian (Dominik García-Lorido) has had her college scholarship revoked and is clandestinely working as a stripper in order to save up enough money to return to school without having to tell her parents about her situation. Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller) is trying to navigate puberty while dealing with his emerging feeder fetish. What’s more they all sneak off for quick smokes on the sly. All these relatively banal secrets are threatened when Vince brings home Tony (Steven Strait) an inmate at the correctional facility where Vince works and — another secret — his long-lost son from a previous relationship.
Felitta concocts an amiable comedy-drama from this setup as the presence of Tony and Molly (Emily Mortimer) Vince’s acting partner with her own secret gradually force the Rizzos to finally be honest with one another. Where the film ends up is easily predictable but Felitta’s sharply written script and workmanlike direction have a lot of fun getting there. Things border awkwardly on the absurd at times but Felitta largely keeps his story reined in relying on his cast’s fiery performances to carry the film.
Garcia is a surprising standout in the way he imbues the blue-collar Vince with a believable confused everyman quality. He essentially plays Vince as an amalgam of ’70s Robert De Niro and a less punch-drunk Sylvester Stallone — a nice touch for a character who slinks off to the bathroom to read about Marlon Brando between moments of soppy sentimentality and shouting matches.
Margulies is also strong as the firecracker Joyce selling the character’s years spent piling up small frustrations into a mountain of resentment. Even Mortimer who begins the film as an aloof and ever-so-whimsical cliché ends up giving a commendable performance once her secret is revealed which casts her previous scenes in a different light. Only Strait and García-Lorido come across limp failing to elevate their characters.
Naturally all the secrets eventually come out in a well-staged crescendo and the Rizzos learn a valuable lesson about the importance of communicating with each other. In truth things wrap up too quickly and neatly but considering that the outcome of the film was never in question Felitta shouldn’t be docked for breezing through the obligatory feel-good ending. He wisely chooses to focus on the Rizzos at their reticent sputtering backhanded best and in doing so has made City Island a fun escape into someone else’s easily solved yet blown-out-of-proportion problems.
