Working from his first original screenplay since 1974\'s The Conversation, Francis Ford Coppola opened the Directors Fortnight at Cannes with Tetro, the florid yet stilted tale of two American brothers doing battle with their familial demons in the picturesque settings of Buenos Aires and Patagonia.
Coppola pours on the local color, which is keenly captured in black and white.
What is not at all \"black and white\" is why Angelo Tetrochini, who now goes by the name of Tetro (Vincent Gallo), is so ornery and standoffish when Benjamin (likable first-timer Alden Ehrenreich), the younger brother he hasn\'t seen for 9 years, drops in on the eve of his 18th birthday. Bennie ran away from military school and joined an Infinity Lines cruise ship as a waiter. He\'s an aspiring writer like the adored Angelo who took off for parts unknown when Bennie was still a lad.
Bennie cherishes a letter on lined notebook paper that concludes: \"I promise I will come back and get you. Your brother, Angelo.\" Now, however, the man calling himself Tetro – a truncated version of the family name – seems peeved that Bennie\'s ship has a short layover in
Buenos Aires and his fresh-faced sibbling is there in his La Boca apartment politely pelting him with questions. The two men share a famous father but were born to different mothers.
Tetro lives with Miranda (Maribel Verdu), a warm-hearted and unfailingly upbeat Spaniard who came to Argentina to work with mental patients. She uses a form of therapy that endorses the curative power of letting the afflicted speak on the radio. (\"Whoever had a microphone finally had someone to listen.\") Patient, nurturing Miranda is so welcoming and fun-loving that it\'s not readily apparent what she sees in the brooding, rude Tetro.
But they\'re clearly in love. \"Doesn\'t she look like Ava Gardner with her hair like that?\" Tetro muses aloud. \"Who\'s Ava Gardner?\" asks Bennie.
This gap in familiarity doesn\'t seem to mesh with Bennie\'s happy memories of his brother showing him Pressburger and Powel\'s The Red Shoes and the pair\'s way out there The Tales of Hoffman. (\"You showed me strange movies,\" Bennie reminisces. \"Tales of Hoffman always reminds me of you.\") Was there an Offenbach channel where they grew up?
This is the kind of movie where a puppy is named Problema and \"the most important literary critic in South America\" (Carmen Maura) is named \'Alone.\'
Coppola could have called his film \"Archetypes\" starring The Tortured Writer, The Good Woman, The Sensitive Youth on the Brink of Manhood, The Aloof Father Figure, The Imperious Critic, The Hot-Blooded Mother and Her Shapely Young Uninhibited Daughter, The Foppish Patron of the Arts and The Hot-Blooded Neighbors Who Fight Then Kiss and Make Up. Did I mention that the locals are exuberant and hot-blooded?
Buried secrets make their way to the surface as the film toggles back and forth between exquisitely lit black and white and vivid passages in colour, which revisit memories. The film is at it\'s best depicting violent accidents and their transposition into dance form. One especially arresting sequence features dancers on a wooden indoor stage whose dance floor suddenly melds with an ocean horizon and a lapping tide.
Coppola, who funded the film himself, is happy with the theatrical aspects of his needlessly overwrought melodrama. He told The Hollywood Reporter that, as with his previous film, Youth Without Youth, starring Tim Roth, \"the camera never moves\" and \"it is rock steady,
because, in fact, there is no operator.\" He and his D.P. would light and frame the shot and cue the actors.
Boyishly charming Ehrenreich, who was 17 when Coppola cast him and is now 19, bears a substantial resemblance to the young Leonardo DiCaprio. Based on this performance, it\'s a safe bet we will be seeing more of him.
