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FUNNY FACE

Funny Face

Tim Sutton

Drama • 2020 • 1h 35m

Reviewed by Beatrice 23. June 2023

Gain is considered as the purpose of man's life, and no longer as a means to satisfy his material needs

After the Berlinale Funny Face lands at Torino Film Fest 38 in the alternative section, Rol's Room.

Brooklyn, a mask flies in the sky, will be worn by Saul.

Disco, a girl goes out, hides and wears a burqa before returning home. There she has a quarrel with her aunt and uncle with whom she lives after being orphaned. She runs away from home and enters a market, steals something but as the manager tries to block her Saul intervenes and pays her bill. They go out together and their touching hipster love story begins.

Also an orphan, he resides with his grandparents, yet another victim of housing speculation; they will have to leave their house in place of which a parking lot will be built.

The two kids sleep, eat, walk, take possession of a drunkard's car, and while she drives he listens continuously to the radio report of basketball games.

The most hilarious, moving, and incredibly acted scene by Cosmo Jarvis is that of the Nets' victory, which elicits an absolutely unmissable physical and verbal violent reaction.

The outburst that follows is all against the basketball company that built Barclay's Center, a $49 billion project consisting of a sports complex, an arena, offices and residential housing at the expense of dispossessed and destroyed local historic homes.

Brooklyn the most populous "borough" in all of New York, a mosaic of neighborhoods one different from the other, the realm of hipsters, hindie-rock, a concentration of clubs, second-hand clothes stores and art galleries has seen transformation in recent years into trendy luxury residential housing areas. And when Saul climbs to the roof of a building and gazes out at the sea and the old amusement park that lines the waterfront, and when he strolls with Zama along the shorelines that join Brighton Beach to Coney Island he passes under the windows of Brooklu Heights, with one of the most beautiful views of Manhattan in all of New York City, where the "developer" building speculator entertains himself with three maidens in erotic/porn/lesbian poses.

Anonymous phone calls, threats, assaults, nothing can remotely dent the evil orgy of building speculation cover-up money laundering.

Saul pursues the rebellious myth of James Dean but cries after an assault: he does not know how to exercise violence, he only knows how to love and this is his destiny. And although he wants to fight and avenge this reality with no rules except those of money, the only gesture he has left is to fly again the mask symbolizing illusory justice.

"Cosmic" interpretation of Saul/Jarvis.

A film that creates a visual spell without rigid narrative structures with boundless emotional spaces.

Haunting music presses in the more enigmatic moments, a magical soundtrack accompanies the more defined ones; the face-to-face between generations is a thread that delineates the narrative; the loss of reference points such as provenance, roots and home are central while capitalism denies the right of citizenship to anyone who stands in the way of its relentless advance.

Construction/financial speculation sucks up resources without generating real development. Wealth does not spread, it concentrates

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