From the get-go, this wonderfully written story of coming of age is a story of layers first visually from outside an apartment house where eighteen year old Victor is seen on one level and was supposed to be on another level, then continuing throughout the story telling. Everyone has a secret that gradually gets peeled away in this saga of both budding hormones and retired hormones of decades past. This is a story honesty told with delightful purity and innocence in all involved.
I was continually in awe of both the quality of the writing and the talent of everybody in the cast. Perfect, simply perfect.
Simply put, we follow a brief period in a sultry summer with the Big Apple skyline of NYC in the background. We follow seven teenagers [plus one grandmother-in-charge of her extended teen charge -- a.k.a mom'] who are steaming with excited hormones racing through every artery and vein in their body. The quest: how to get from here to there in a kewl fashion without a roadmap of experience outside of the usual strutting and boasting to one's friends (much in advance of any actual success).
The story is filled with humorous contradictions and symbolism in the presence of the untold secrets and layers most of which get revealed. There is a pairing off of three of the teen pairs towards some sort of resolution on a path approaching adulthood. A chain locked dial telephone is most symbolic along with a piano. The locking of a phone is mom's method towards enforcing chastity, and the unlocking is the passage of Victor into manhood as a responsible person in his family. Victor's younger brother resumes playing the piano, with his sexual orientation dangling somewhere to be determined at a later date.
Wonderful story and directing.
I was continually in awe of both the quality of the writing and the talent of everybody in the cast. Perfect, simply perfect.
Simply put, we follow a brief period in a sultry summer with the Big Apple skyline of NYC in the background. We follow seven teenagers [plus one grandmother-in-charge of her extended teen charge -- a.k.a mom'] who are steaming with excited hormones racing through every artery and vein in their body. The quest: how to get from here to there in a kewl fashion without a roadmap of experience outside of the usual strutting and boasting to one's friends (much in advance of any actual success).
The story is filled with humorous contradictions and symbolism in the presence of the untold secrets and layers most of which get revealed. There is a pairing off of three of the teen pairs towards some sort of resolution on a path approaching adulthood. A chain locked dial telephone is most symbolic along with a piano. The locking of a phone is mom's method towards enforcing chastity, and the unlocking is the passage of Victor into manhood as a responsible person in his family. Victor's younger brother resumes playing the piano, with his sexual orientation dangling somewhere to be determined at a later date.
Wonderful story and directing.