I have no clue how or when I met
director/producer/writer Michael Medeiros, but we got to talking via email and
FB, and at one point I was even sort of in the running to be the
“weird-sounding voice he needed for a minute” in his spectacular new film, Tiger
Lily Road. (take a gander at clips here.) I’ve been following the whole process of his film and when Michael
sent me a disc of the finished film, I was promptly and totally knocked out.
First of all, the film looks and
sounds breathtakingly great, thanks in part ot cinematographer Nils Kenaston
and director Medeiros. The movie has moments you don’t forget: the luminescent
glow of snow punctuated by the determined tromp of bright boots. Two glossy
eggs being beaten in a bowl. A purple sweater that’s so saturated in color you
can’t take your eyes off it. All of it ties together against a teasing backdrop
of impish music from Milosz Jeziorski. The performances are so full of nuance,
that even a five minute clip featuring a convenience store checkout girl who
refuses to sell a hot dog because the buyer is four cents short is a revelation
because of both her carefully applied sludge-colored lipstick and the
calibrated roll of her eyes.
Medeioros told me that the idea of
the film came from a dinner party, when he met these two fantastic women and
neither one of them had a partner, and he couldn’t figure out why. He began to
think about Callie Khouri’s groundbreaking film, Thelma & Louise, and
wondered: are we still stuck over a precipice? Or have we crashed and flown on?
If the women, Annie and Louise, in his story, have not evolved beyond that
moment in mid-air, what’s holding them back? What do women really want and is
it possible? And if it isn’t, then what is? In short, Tiger Lilly Road is a
film about women figuring out their options without men. Two best friends and an old woman share a rural
Connecticut house, and they are bemoaning their love lives. Why don’t they have
successful relationships with men? “It’s over for us,” one character, who used
to be the town bad girl, flatly tells the other, and that does seem to be the
case. They swear off even trying for men for a year, but then a sexy, young
fugitive stumbles into their midst, and each woman begins to have an idea of what
she wants—and why—and makes plan to get it. But if you think you know what’s
going to happen, you’re wrong, because
the film keeps breaking the ground from under your feet and rearranging it in
off-kilter ways, and it’s so deliciously different, that even my very critical teenaged
son came in and sat down to watch.
“I wanted to use theater trained
actors for their ability to conceptualize complex characters,” Medeiros told
me, and the performances are amazing. Rita Gardner, who was in the original
production of the Fantasticks with Jerry Orbach, is hilarious and moving as the
old woman of the bunch who seems more connected with life and her sexuality than
the younger women do. Two-time Emmy winner, Tom Pelphrey, and uber talented
stage actresses, Ilvi Dulack and Karen Chamberlain give incandescent
performances. So do Tom Nardini and Sarah Shaefer.
Outrageous, smart and
deeply subversive, this dark little fairy tale shocks, surprises and pops with provocative
dividends. Come on, you know you can’t wait to see it.
MICHAEL
MEDEIROS wrote and directed the 2007 dramatic short film,
Underground,
which played festivals in the UK, France and the U.S. Michael grew
up in Hawaii
where he became enthralled with the theatre and soon moved to NY
to train as an
actor with legendary coach, Uta Hagen. He most recently received
critical
acclaim at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in Camino Real. Film & television
projects
include, X-Men First Class, Synecdoche New York, Sometime In August
(Hamptons
–Golden Starfish), RoboCop2, Person of Interest, Son of the Morning
Star and Law
& Order. He is a founding member of the writer’s lab, New River
Dramatists.
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