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Larry Yust has an image—the tiny granny from The Ladykillers wielding a carving knife—as the anchor for his melancholy-sardonic portrait of rundown Cincinnati in the middle of gentrification. Neighborhoods are razed in the shadow of skyscrapers not built to last (cf. Mazursky's Harry and Tonto), the geriatric pixie (Paula Trueman) watches the construction from the sidelines and trembles with joy as hard-hats get barbecued alive in a short-circuiting elevator. The predicament has a name, "temporary dislocation," against it is the geezer gang comprised of the sightless violinist (Peter Brocco), the timorous Baby Jane (Frances Fuller), the stoic superintendent and his wife (Ian Wolfe, Ruth McDevitt), and the wizened widower surrounded by piles of memories (William Hansen). Banding together while city employees serve eviction notices, they quickly realize that sabotage and murder might be the only ways the disenfranchised elderly have to make themselves heard. Umberto D. by and large, "there's always dust now," for the grisly tell-tale details there's Hitchcock's Frenzy. A comedy of mortality and an endearing account of spry character actors carrying the bloody show, with Whistler evoked in the calm and sure technique that takes note of the wrecking ball that comes unscrewed, the choleric capitalist entombed in his own cement, the line of ducks gliding past the camera while someone gets drowned in the distance. "To brick and mortar... to flesh and bone" goes the sepulchral toast, setting up Yust's offbeat punchline out of Vernon Lee ("And thus, somewhat irrelevantly, concludes my praise of older houses"). With Linda Marsh, Douglas Fowley, and Kenneth Tobey.
--- Fernando F. Croce |