Finding North
USA 1997
Reviewed by Melanie McGrath
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
After losing his lover Bobby to Aids, Travis Furlong finds himself on Brooklyn Bridge contemplating suicide. He is spotted by Rhonda, a friendless Bronx bankclerk looking for Mr Right. However, Travis doesn't kill himself. Instead, he turns up at her cashier's desk some time later and she decides they were meant to be together. Rhonda follows him to his apartment where he rebuffs her. Meanwhile, Travis has received a tape through the mail from Bobby instructing him to take his lover's ashes on a sentimental journey to Bobby's home turf in Texas. There he will find a series of clues leading him to his dead lover's last wish.
On the way to the airport he encounters Rhonda. Thinking she has at last found her Prince Charming, she follows Travis to Texas and the two embark on the journey of discovery, coming to an understanding of themselves and of each other and becoming firm Platonic friends. Having symbolically buried Bobby's ashes in the family plot, Travis and Rhonda head back north to begin their lives anew in New York City as was Bobby's last wish.
Review
Film fashion being as starkly ephemeral as any other kind, it is hard to watch an Aids-issue film without feeling instantly transported back into the late 80s when Aids stood as much for American Independent Dreary Sob-story as it did for auto-immune deficiency syndrome. It's not that Aids is unimportant or unworthy of film narratives, it's just that it is no longer possible to represent it - as it was in so many American indies of the late 80s and early 90s - as a synonym for moral goodness. Over the intervening years Aids has become (quite rightly) integrated into the wider world of illness, its existence no more shocking than cancer or heart failure and its victims no more virtuous. We have, in other words, knocked Aids off its privileged perch. Its screen victims can no longer demand our sympathy; they must earn it.
Which is why, as a story of one man's redemption, first-feature director Tanya Wexler's Finding North fails in all directions. Though we understand Aids has, ironically, become for the bereaved but HIV-negative Travis a psychological prophylactic, protecting him from the threat of true engagement with the world, he is just too narcissistic, too snobbish and too altogether humourless for us to be able to regard his neurasthenic withdrawal as the world's loss. John Benjamin Hickey gives a tight and sympathetic performance, but even he cannot save his character from coming over as a little shit. This is a man who announces "I'm going to floss" as though the free world depended on it. A man who - with overtones of Pygmalion - thinks fit to advise his travelling companion to wear her hair small not big lest she appear too trashy.
And this is also a man who imagines that Texans don't know what cellphones are. Condescension pervades this film, not simply in the guise of Travis, but in the use of Texas as a liminal space peppered with freakish moteliers, meathead rednecks and noble-savage sensualists, designed for nothing so much as the psychic refurbishment of New Yorkers. This is the kind of Texas where the locals say, "down here we call that..." and everyone wanders about in chaps and Stetsons.
Wendy Makkena gets all the best lines and puts on a faultless show as the dry, kind, embittered Rhonda, turning 30 and battling with loneliness and a particularly nasty (and implausible) species of Jewish mother. But Rhonda, like Texas, is simply another device in Travis' sanctimonious conversion back to life. It's a pity, since Makkena is too good an actress and Rhonda too generous a character to be wasted like this. She may be necessary to redeem Travis but even she is not sufficient to redeem Finding North.
Credits
- Producers
- Steven A. Jones
- Stephen Dyer
- Screenplay
- Kim Powers
- Director of Photography
- Michael Barrett
- Editor
- Thom Zimny
- Production Designer
- James B. Smythe
- Music
- Café Noir
- ©SoNo Pictures, Inc
- Production Company
- SoNo Pictures, Inc. presents a film by Tanya Wexler
- Executive Producer
- Hal (Corky) Kessler
- Co-producer
- Mike Dempsey
- Line Producer
- Stephen Dyer
- Production Co-ordinator
- Molly Brewer
- Unit Production Managers
- Mike Dempsey
- NY:
- Nadia Leonelli
- Location Managers
- Shawn Hueston
- Assistant Directors
- Mike Dempsey
- Merri Brewer
- David Lynn
- New York:
- Hunter Carson
- Script Supervisors
- Gina Grande
- Additional New York Unit:
- Roberta Bouchard
- Casting
- Brett Goldstein
- Texas:
- Texas Casting
- Carla James
- Mike O'Daniel
- 2nd Unit Director of Photography
- Bill Schwarz
- Art Director
- Terry Osburn
- Storyboard Artist
- Chad Jackson
- Costume Designer
- Katelyn Burton
- Wardrobe
- Additional NY Unit:
- Troy Johnson
- Key Hair/Make-up
- Leah Rial
- Additional NY Unit:
- Nicole Barrett
- Titles/Opticals
- DuArt Film & Video
- Music Performers
- Café Noir:
- Guitars/Mandolin:
- Jason Bucklin
- Viola/Violin/Guitar:
- Norbert Gerl
- Violin/Viola/Clarinet/ Accordion/Backing Vocals:
- Gale Hess
- Featured Vocals:
- Randy Erwin Skalicky
- Guitars/Bass:
- Lyles West
- Additional Musicians
- Piano:
- Lee Tomboulian
- Drums/Percussion:
- Dennis Durick
- Music Supervisor
- T.J. Morehouse
- Music Editor
- Brian Rund
- Music Engineer
- Michael Vazquez
- Scoring Producer
- Norbert Gerl
- Soundtrack
- "One Last Dance" by/performed by Café Noir, featured vocals: Randy Erwin; "Baja Bingo", "Better", "Curry Favor" by/performed by Eddie Bydalek; "Mother Maybelle" by J. Maphis, R. Maphis, performed by The Nashville Grass, Johnny Cash; "Starlight Waltz" arranged by M. Christian, performed by Josh Graves; "I'll Be All Smiles Tonight" arranged by M. Christian, performed by (1) Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass, (2) Buddy Spicher; "Hill Country Waltz" by Don Walser, Pat Baughman, performed by Don Walser and the Pure Texas Band; "Blue Is the Color of Lonesome" by Don Parmley, David Parmley, performed by The Bluegrass Cardinals; "Beautiful Dreamer" by M. Christian, performed by Benny Martin; "Black and White Rag" arranged by M. Christian, performed by Johnny Gimble; "Cowboy Ramsey", "Rolling Stone from Texas" by Don Walser, performed by Don Walser and the Pure Texas Band; "Hawaii How Are Ya?" by Mark Thornton, performed by Robby Turner, Mark Thornton; "Goodbye My Bluebell" arranged by M. Christian, performed by Merle Travis; "Yodel Polka" by/performed by Don Walser; "One Last Dance (Reprise)" by/performed by Café Noir, featured vocals: Randy Erwin, Amy Zimmerman
- Sound Design
- Marshall Grupp
- Sound Mixers
- Lance Hoffman
- Additional NY Unit:
- David Powers
- Re-recording Engineer
- Robert Fernandez
- Sound One
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Marshall Grupp
- Pink Noise
- Sound Editor
- Bryan Klump
- Dialogue Editors
- Richard King
- Jason Canovas
- ADR
- Engineer:
- Mark Desimone
- Foley
- Artists:
- Brian Vancho
- Nancy Cabrera
- Editor:
- George Lara
- Cast
- Wendy Makkena
- Rhonda Portelli
- John Benjamin Hickey
- Travis Furlong
- Anne Bobby
- Debi
- Rebecca Creskoff
- Gina
- Angela Pietropinto
- Mama Portelli
- Freddie Roman
- Papa Portelli
- Molly McClure
- Aunt Bonnie Tucker
- Jonathan Walker
- voice of Robert 'Bobby' L. Sullivan
- Yusef Bulos
- taxi driver
- Garrett Moran
- stripper
- Steven Jones
- funeral director
- Lynn Metrik
- bank manager
- Phyllis Cicero
- Janice
- Spiro Malas
- waiter
- Amy Zimmerman
- ticket agent
- Lisa Peterson
- car rental agent
- Bo Barron
- counter boy
- Cherami Leigh Kuehn
- Gretchen
- Matt Whitton
- young Bobby
- Jody Napolotano
- young Don Franklin
- Gail Cronauer
- Mrs Penn
- Jay Michaelson
- Bud
- Lou Ann Stephens
- Ethel/Bethel
- R. Bruce Elliot
- TV salesman
- Kermit Key
- Richard Rogers
- Russ Marker
- geezers
- T.J. Morehouse
- drugstore clerk
- Mary Sheldon
- Ellen
- Westin Self
- younger 'Devil' Bobby
- Norman Bennett
- Farmer McDonald
- Kirk Sisco
- Joel Greco
- Victoria Wright
- Kelly Lewis
- Kim Powers
- Steve Brannon
- Chad Jackson
- Katelyn Burton
- Mike Madrigal
- party guests
- Marisa Perez
- baby sitter
- Harrison Lindley
- cowboy
- Jesse Plemmons
- hobo
- Sara Proctor
- princess
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Millivres Multimedia
- 8,521 feet
- 94 minutes 40 seconds
- In Colour