No Sleep Until: 'Pratfall'
A meet that's not so cute, but is wide-eyed and fanciful. For a while.
Dear Moviegoers,
On the whole, I’m too anxious of a person to just walk around a cityscape, no matter how beautiful the concrete, the culture, and the crazies may be. Alex Andre’s Pratfall, a movie he wrote, directed, shot, and edited by himself, is full of those three C-words and is most definitely beautiful to watch. It is also most definitely stressful and up for some interpretation, perhaps of the loose variety. Walking and talking, eating and anecdotes, and heavy doses of coffee.
Think of the ending to the James L. Brooks film As Good as It Gets, where Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt kiss while waiting for a bread shop to open early in the late morning. How sweet that was. How about when right after, Jack’s character Melvin ignores an OCD moment, swapping it out for a happy time with his gal pal? Even sweeter. That is a New York City movie. The kind that would be advertised on tourism brochures (if such things exist there). Still, a good film.
Pratfall twists that up a bit, or rather pulls that rug out from underneath.
Starring Chloe Groussard as a naive French tourist stuck in Central Park with no money and no help, and the great Joshua Burge (Relaxer, Vulcanizadora) as Eli, a fidgety insomniac who’s always walking and always talking (to himself usually), Pratfall too is very much a New York City movie, but also slightly beyond the infinite definition of what that often means. It’s cultural and contemporary, charming and cute, and then…
The weight of the film is carried by the two leads and camera operator (among those other titles) Alex Andre, as Pratfall attempts a walking tour of NYC, all the while doing the dirty of drama and showcasing a burgeoning and unlikely friendship. It’s amazing. I’m amazed at how such a small production could make such a small film feel large in scope. Is that the power of a city or a director and his cast? Both?
Joshua Burge performs his characters with legend and continues that trend with Eli. The young man whips out words like he’s a thesaurus and speaks sentences with tenuous connections to previous ones, like jumpy jumping-off points. He’s twitchy and wide awake, but he’s no Taxi Driver case—just a sad sack with confrontational friendliness. He’s a New Yorker. A cinematic New Yorker. A theatrical one. Burge gets it, as he always does. When he meets Joelle, it’s from a point of annoyance; he hates her “I Heart NYC” shirt. Feeling sorry for his aggression while hiding a deep loneliness, he agrees to show her his New York, pizza and museums and street vendors and all.
That is the vast majority of the Pratfall. The film is magic with many wonderful moments that combine fish out-of-water sightseeing with half-truths about city lore and tons of ramblings about anything, seen and unseen. I would normally say that we’re following these two, but Alex Andre shoots from in front, almost walking backward to present scenes as if they’re being guided from venue to venue. Maybe they are. Maybe something is willing them to Eli’s favorite haunts. This certainly wasn’t his idea to begin with, but he’s rolling with it anyway. After all, what else would he be doing?
There’s a stupendous effect that the charismatic combination of performances, cinematography, and soundtrack creates that never lets up. There are no redundancies, nothing is dull, and nothing breaks. It’s Pratfall’s always forward-seeking motion that keeps attention glued. And it’s the film’s romanticism and mystery that lurks behind our leads, being what IS following them.
I wouldn’t want to spoil the underbelly of Pratfall other than to say that the title plays its hand in one startling moment, completely turning the movie on its head and dropping everything built up to that point. Months later, I’m still contemplating the meaning of that. The idea of it is dark and hypnotic, and I’ll likely save my thoughts on it for another day.
For today, let us leave this review with the following: Joshua Burge is a king of acting and improvisation and attitude, and Pratfall is one of the best independent films of the year. It’s as good as it gets. 5/5
Pratfall is now available on demand for rent and purchase. It’s also on Tubi.