The term “mumblecore” gets thrown around a lot when discussing films from SXSW that deal with 20-somethings and relationships. Mumblecore has been described in countless publications as a new “movement” to grow primarily out of New York’s underground, independent film circuit. But if you ask an average critic what a mumblecore film is, they usually give you a long list of cinematic techniques—nonprofessional, improvised performances; digital handheld camerawork; loose time structures that cover, at most, weeks in the characters’ lives—that actually rule out most of the films they discuss and instead whittle the entire movement down to only one movie: Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs. Nonetheless, filmmakers like Aaron Katz and Andrew Bujalski get lumped in under the umbrella of mumblecore because of an underlying tangible reality that their films give to the relationships and lives of the young adults portrayed within their microcosm of a world.

The characters in Daryl Wein’s Breaking Upwards live in that same world, the claustrophobic bubble of New York City, which feels just small enough for you to run into people you know at any given moment and just big enough for those you don’t know to penetrate your life in meaningful and abrupt ways. The story follows a couple who, feeling stilted from the sense of this world’s walls closing in after several years of a relationship, decide to adhere to an agreed upon set of rules and restrictions as a way to reinvigorate their love life. They take days off, split up digital chat rooms that each can dominate and encourage each other to follow a strict regiment of space building, all in the interest of rekindling what they once had. The presence of both sets of parents in the story (probably the strongest among a plethora of well-written, excellently executed performances) serves to reinforce the tiny space the characters live in, one in which they can’t seem to get away from their emotions for each other.

Having said that, Breaking Upwards seems to cross some artificial line into a realm where by no stretch of the imagination could one describe it as mumblecore. The carefully honed acting, beautiful, stable cinematography and pointedly decisive direction all tend towards more traditional Hollywood tropes. But the structure certainly draws from the loose narrative form that we’ve seen come out of countless SXSW projects over the last few years. The film itself has very little to do with its premise. The couple quickly surpasses their exercise and inevitably spirals into a series of collaborative events that destroy their relationship. This is what sets Wein’s screenplay (penned along with co-writer Peter Duchan and lead actress Zoe Lister Jones) apart from any of its influences, taking aspects of the so-called “mumblecore” phenomenon—the purist desire to make cinema that meticulously reflects the pains and triumphs of real life—and successfully combining them with the customs of a big budget romantic comedy, creating a stirring combination that, though seeped in escapist convention, hits surprisingly and emotionally close to home.

In a time when the independent film world seems to be ready to move on from divisive projects built on improvised scripts and handheld camera work, Wein’s film stands out, learning from this ever-growing contemporary film “movement” while reminding us why the traditionally manipulative techniques that tear at your heart strings became tradition in the first place.

— Michael Lerman

(Let the Right One In is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Magnolia Pictures. Watch the trailer here.)

About once a year, a filmmaker succeeds at creating truly idiosyncratic genre fare, employing all the tropes of a standard stock of classics (such as giant monsters in Bong Joon-ho’s The Host) and working with them to create a stirring, original vision. This year, the well-deserved prize goes to Tomas Alfredson for his gentle depiction of child vampires in Let the Right One In.

The story is simple. In a small rural community on the Scandinavian countryside, Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), a young introvert, is having trouble fitting in. Tormented by a pack of vicious school bullies, he spends most of his days longing for a better life while physically fighting for the one he does have. That is right up until he meets Eli (Lina Leandersson), the mysterious new girl next door. Secretly salivating over the prospect of young love, Oskar begrudgingly befriends Eli, taking careful steps to what he thinks will result in a blossoming relationship. It will, but first both of them have to deal with Eli’s unusual eating habits—the kind that require her older companion to go out in the middle of the night and slit the throats of random bystanders in the nearby park to drain them of their blood. When bodies begin to pile up all over town, a set of unfortunate circumstances leaves Eli on her own to fend dietetically as she trains Oskar to fight back against his young agitators.

What makes Alfredson’s film so unique is how he focuses the action. Instead of treating the material as a violent revenge story, fraught with malicious intent, he chooses to explore the more tender aspects of the characters. Eli and Oskar’s relationship is built on the standards and practices of any two twelve-year-olds, testing each other’s trust and loyalty while fumbling through the awkwardness of what it means to “go steady.” It is only then that Alfredson begins to inject the vampirism into the story, using it as a tool to tell a different age-old tale. A childish game of chicken becomes a potentially deadly exercise when Oskar forces Eli to break the rule of entering a home without being invited. Eli’s early morning fleeing from Oskar’s bed to escape the sunlight gives her the appearance of standard, fickle adolescent. It is as if Alfredson began with a checklist for how to make a coming-of-age film and then found a way to teach each of its lessons using the vampire handbook.

With this mentality in mind, the other elements seem to fall into place. Hoyt van Hoytema’s dreamlike camera work gives the snowy Swedish landscape a dark, storybook feel, while Johan Söderqvist’s haunting score intrigues you at every turn. And while Hedebrant acquits himself admirably as the cautious Oskar, so beaten down by the small world around him that it takes a considerable amount to gain his trust, Leandersson churns out one of the more beautifully nuanced child performances of all time as the kid-in-mind vampire carrying the weight of 101-years-of-living on her shoulders and trying to find love and companionship in her lonely, gypsy lifestyle.

Slowly but surely, the film does creep its way towards the ultimately inevitable violence that hangs over the characters with impending doom, but not before transporting the audience back to a place of early romance, a place where your palms got clammy and a cold sweat dripped down your brow as you tiptoed your way across the playground to talk to the girl whose name you’ve been writing in your notebook over and over during math class. For die-hard genre fanatics, rest assured, there are plenty of smartly executed, hip gore sequences buried deep inside Let the Right One In. You just get the pleasure of digging past its heart before finding them.

— Michael Lerman

In many ways, Prince of Broadway belongs to a camp of movies that is rapidly writing its own history. Alongside films like Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi, Jan Sverák’s Kolya and The Dardenne Brothers’ L’Enfant, it tells the story of an inept, misguided older man forced to take care of a baby. Together, both man and child mature through their relationship with each other, often resulting in both hilarity and tragedy. But what sets Baker’s film apart is the shockingly honest humanity he portrays along the way. There’s no glamour to his characters’ lives, no cutesy moments where they learn universal truths, no glitzy art direction that idealizes their world, no nail-biting chases where the child is used as a prop for monetary gain. No, Baker’s film exists in the real world, where undeveloped “children” are often forced to raise children of their own through the unglamorous day-to-day grind.

I still haven’t seen Take Out, but from everything I’ve read, Prince of Broadway seems like a logical next step. The aforementioned humanity allows Baker to discuss things like illegal immigration through the course of a pre-established cinematic construct, in this case the one of an immature man who must deal with a child that has been thrust upon him. It’s as if he is building off the shoulders of Hood, Sverák and The Dardennes to make something much more poignant and timely by using the themes he’s already prepared in his previous work. Much like Michael Haneke does in Cache, Baker matures as a filmmaker by employing greater subtlety to his work, letting what he wants to say come out of the subtext of the story as opposed to ever directly mentioning it.

Stylistically, the beautiful digital video look adds to the simplicity of the piece, allowing the drama of the characters’ lives to speak for itself and ride its own natural arch. Many of the scenes are played for a surprising and often comedic effect. Characters will take a dramatic shift in tone (in one standout scene, a couple’s argument quickly turns from seemingly playful to nasty). Even the way Lucky first receives Prince seems like a comedy of errors as Linda asks Lucky to hold him for a second and then takes off out the door. It’s as if Baker could find the drama of a wall being painted and make it kinetic, unexpected and cinematically original with a pixel-vision camera.

I would be remiss if I finished without mentioning the fantastic performance by Prince Adu. Never has a street hustler been more charismatically self-serving. Like Bruno Ganz’s Hitler or James Gadolfini’s Tony Soprano, Adu’s performance will go down in the books as one of those astonishing pieces of acting that makes a man out of a monster. This time around, Baker is not only showing off his first rate directing skills; he’s showcasing Adu alongside him.

— Michael Lerman

(Prince of Broadway just won the Target Filmmaker Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2008 Los Angeles Film Festival, which carries with it a $50,000 cash prize. Visit the film’s official website for upcoming screenings and distribution news, but for now, watch the trailer here.)