BOX OF MOONLIGHT Director:Tom DiCillo. Starring: John Turturro, Sam Rockwell (15)
NEW FILMS
A bewitching comedy from the director of Living in Oblivion, which takes a cliched scenario - uptight working man (the construction supervisor Al, played by John Turturro) meets wild free spirit (The Kid, a firecracker in a Davy Crockett costume, played by Sam Rockwell) - and turns it inside out.
When the job Al is working on away from home is mysteriously cancelled, he decides to make the most of his free time and spend a few days on his own. While regularly calling his wife and reassuring her that the job is coming along on schedule, Al is actually driving around, revisiting a lake which played a big part in his youth, and getting involved with The Kid, who persuades him to drive him home to a trailer park in the woods. Al reluctantly agrees, and ends up spending his days with The Kid, having tomato fights, fooling around in the river and, if not exactly bonding, then falling into stride with The Kid's way of life.
Turturro and Rockwell are a joy together, and DiCillo (who also wrote the screenplay) teases out the similarities in their characters with great care and subtlety, so that the relationship never becomes a straightforward swapping of spirits, but more a gentle excursion into two men who are each, in different ways, constricted by their own life.
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