Tribeca hit is getting a second life at MoMA
GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH (Damien Chazelle, 2009)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, November 21, introduced by Damien Chazelle, 3:00
Sunday, November 22, introduced by Damien Chazelle, 6:00
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.guyandmadeline.com
www./moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1013
Twenty-three-year-old writer-director Damien Chazelle has expanded his senior thesis at Harvard into an unusual black-and-white musical that mixes John Cassavetes’s SHADOWS and FACES with Jacques Demy’s THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (and a little French Nouvelle Vague) as seen through the modern lens of mumblecore. An accomplished jazz drummer, Chazelle (who makes a cameo in the film behind the kits) casts real-life jazz trumpeter and first-time actor Jason Palmer as Guy, a jazz trumpeter in a relationship with Madeline (Desiree Garcia), whom he met on a Boston park bench. But when Guy strays following a chance encounter on a train with a stranger named Elena (Sandha Khin) — an electrifying scene filled with heat and passion — Madeline leaves him, instead dreaming of making a new life for herself in New York. But as the two of them go their separate ways, they still imagine what could have been. The film features such actual musicians and dancers as Andre Hayward of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, tap-dancer Kelly Kaleta, and teenage saxophone prodigy Grace Kelly. (Look for Chazelle’s father, Benard, as Paul.) Justin Hurwitz wrote the music for five of the original songs, with Chazelle supplying the lyrics. A slow-paced, heartfelt drama, GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, which played the Tribeca Film Festival, has the improvisational feel of a quiet jazz solo, a soft, tender film about love and loss and how fragile meaningful relationships can be.
GUY AND MADELINE are part of the MoMA series “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You,” which runs November 19-22 and also includes such overlooked and undiscovered works as Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s OCTOBER COUNTRY, Ry Russo-Young’s YOU WONT MISS ME, Tariq Tapa’s ZERO BRIDGE, and Frazer Bradshaw’s EVERYTHING STRANGE AND NEW; many of the screenings will be introduced by the directors.