@NYFF53 Day 10:On the Road With 'Microbe and Gasoline' and Loving Every Mile of the Ride; Nothing Really Special About 'Maggie's Plan'

Theo (Theophile Baquet) and Daniel (Ange Dargent) have to avoid trouble on the road in "Microbe & Gasoline. Photos from "Microbe & Gasoline" Facebook page.

WATCHING a coming-of-age-movie is always a tricky proposition. The viewer never knows what s/he is going to get. It can be insultingly shallow, puerile, gross. It can also be intelligent and thoughtful.

Thankfully, Michel Gondry’s “Microbe & Gasoline” (“Microbe et Gasoil”) is the latter. The film has its U.S.
premiere today at the 53rd New York Film Festival.

Microbe/Daniel (Ange Dargent) and Gasoline/Theo (Theophile Baquet) are like a Reese’s peanut butter cup. The whole is greater than its parts. Both are outcasts. Microbe, because he is diminutive compared with his classmates. Gasoline, because he reeks of petrol and is the new kid in school.

In each other they recognize brilliance and a kindred spirit. The boys bond almost instantly.

MG, an Academy Award winner for the screenplay of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” wrote the script. As in that film, in “Microbe & Gasoline” he employs touches of the fantastical.

The boys not only build a car that looks like a small house, they – unbeknownst to their parents – embark on a roadtrip in it. How they avoid an encounter with the police is the stuff of pure fantasy!

Myriad adventures – sad, surreal, funny, potentially dangerous – await.

The best part of the film, however, is the sparkling dialogue between Daniel and Theo when they are building the house-car and when they are riding in it. Here is a buddy film for the intellectual set.

Theo (Theophile Baquet) and Daniel (Ange Dargent) are ready to rock and roll in "Microbe & Gasoline.

MG has said he is drawn to emotions, and they inform much of the conversation between scientific-minded Theo and artistic Daniel who is experiencing existential crises, including puppylove. The young actors take to the dialogue like a duck to water, fiercely owning the words coming out of their mouths. Their exchanges have nuance and depth often lacking in characters their age.

“Microbe & Gasoline” is a coming-of-age film that has wide appeal.

'Maggie's Plan' Doesn't Exactly Grab Me

Ethan Hawke and Greta Gerwig in "Maggie's Plan." Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

IT’S a harmless, offbeat, not particularly interesting romantic comedy set in New York City.

What else to say about “Maggie’s Plan,” the latest from director Rebecca Miller who also wrote the script?

It has its U.S. premiere tonight at the 53rd New York Film Festival.

From an original work by Karen Rinaldi, it stars Greta Gerwig as the title character, winning as a Managing Miss who greets the world with near wide-eyed wonder

Ethan Hawke (John) is credibly clueless as the man volleyed between Maggie and Georgette, a cold, superior, dismissive, self-centered, self-possessed, superstar anthropology professor at Columbia University. She is portrayed by Julianne Moore, speaking in a superfluous, vaguely Eastern European accent.

All three work in academia, actually.

Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore in "Maggie's Plan."

Maggie’s plan: return John to Georgette. He left the latter – the mother of his first two children – for the former because he was not getting enough love, support and understanding. Maggie’s wants no more of him because after he gives her a child he seems to have no more LSU.

It is this quagmire and GG's performance that are the only interesting aspects of the film, saving it from utter tedium. An honorable mention is that Maggie is not cast in the role of homewrecker; John gets and deserves that dubious honor.

Maggie’s plan initially works, then sputters, backfires and finally rights itself. All and sundry return to co-parenting.

The end, thankfully.

Visit http://www.filmlinc.com to learn more about the 53rd New York Film Festival, including showtimes and venues.

'Blood From a Stone' Gushes Family Dysfunction

Gordon Clapp, Ethan Hawke and Ann Dowd are members of an unhappy family in "Blood From a Stone." Photos by Monique Carboni.

BY TAMARA BECK

TOMMY Nohilly picks up Eugene O’Neill’s mantle as the great American playwright of domestic dysfunction with “Blood from a Stone.”

It is his first play and it gets top-notch treatment by The New Group in its premiere at Theatre Row under Scott Elliott’s steady direction. The production is in a limited but extended run through 19 Feb.

The play opens on the disheveled main floor of a working-class Connecticut home with Travis (Ethan Hawke) and his mother, Margaret (Ann Dowd), folding laundry and grousing about Travis’ father, Bill (Gordon Clapp). Margaret points out the broken thermostat, among other things. Bill, she informs Travis, won’t fix the roof to prevent the leak in the kitchen. These oversights and the prevailing rage in this household can be very dangerous.

Daphne Rubin-Vega and Ethan Hawke as lovers in "Blood From a Stone."

Though his family is unawares, Travis has come home to say goodbye. His perpetual wanderlust is taking him West. EH, best known as a film actor, is phenomenal as the son who almost got away – the outsider drawn back into the maelstrom. Travis seems even-tempered and sensible, yet he has his issues. He pops his mother’s painkillers, is having an affair with a former girlfriend (Daphne Rubin-Vega), and can’t keep a job. On this trip he’s taking gifts of cash from his mother and younger sister, Sarah (Natasha Lyonne).

When Bill returns home from work he pours himself and Travis a glass of milk and reminisces about taking the kids to a diner in the Bronx when they were little. His son, though, resists this attempt at closeness. Travis is a mama’s boy and the oldest of three children.

The youngest Matt (Thomas Guiry) seems most scarred by the bitterness in the household. TG is at once cocky, smarmy and needy. Matt doesn’t just take from his family like his big brother, he steals. His mother doesn’t like him to be alone upstairs with her stuff, she says.

AD’s Margaret is a loving mother but is extremely manipulative. She has succeeded in dividing her children’s loyalties much in the same way that she and Bill have divided their house.

Gordon Clapp and Ethan Hawke as a father and son who have a failure to communicate in "Blood From a Stone."

For his part, Bill is out of touch with his family and even his own feelings. He and Margaret live separate lives in the same house, separated by a long history of anger, distrust, and miscommunication. She curses him savagely even when he ineffectually tries to fix some of what is broken. GC, best known as a TV actor, subtly unveils the ordinary humanity under all of Bill's pent-up and intense brutality. “Blood from a Stone” is in part about this slow burn and the toll it takes on the whole family.

The growing squalor of the surroundings in “Blood from a Stone” mimics the family’s turmoil. The action moves at a deliberate pace. It rises to a crescendo of violence and threat, revealing its characters’ terrifying problems in small and intimate ways.

“Blood from a Stone” is a humble, eloquent and elegant work of art.

Visit http://www.thenewgroup.org/ to learn more about “Blood from a Stone.”