Jason Palmer and Desiree Garcia star in Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. Photograph by W.A.W. Parker.Nouvelle Vague novelties
By John Esther
If you are heading to AFI Fest 2009 this weekend with a companion who generally refers to non-Hollywood movies as "weird," you may find some middle ground with Damien Chazelle's Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.
With all the dumbed-down narrative virtuosity of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Chazelle's film apes superior Nouvelle Vague directors and their films of the early 1960s (Jean-Luc Godard, in particular) and sets it to a bourgeois jazz score -- performed by the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra -- so non-threatening one could imagine Sen. Joe Lieberman tapping his toes. And like the most overrated film of the 1990s, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench pretty much ends and starts in the same place, only to move the narrative just a bit into the future for its optimistic conclusion.
Before the 83rd minute of the film Guy (Jason Palmer) meets, mistreats, seeks and tweaks for girl, Madeline (Desiree Garcia). He is a trumpeter working his way up the jazz ladder. She is an unambitious, barely employable gal breaking into noxious song and dance. They miss each other in many ways, but cannot find the courage or coincidence to bring them back together. Fortunately, these shortcoming are nothing a feel-good goody goodness film cannot overcome.
A 20/20 selection for AFI Fest 2009, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is the kind of film you would expect to see from Hollywood yesteryear: shot in black and white (by Chazelle); bad boy and troubled girl coming together in the big city; people breaking into song; flagrant sentimentality; and finding security in the future.
Of course, old golden Hollywood would never cast someone like Palmer or Garcia as the leads in a romantic film. Yet that hardly makes for social progress or independent cinema (beyond budget). A reactionary film, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench just uses a few certain challenging tropes, which are hardly radical today, and makes it more palatable to less adventurous audiences.
(Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is scheduled to screen Oct. 31, 2 p.m., at Mann Chinese Theater 6, 6801 Hollywood Blvd. For more information: 866/AFI-FEST; www.afi.com)
