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| Plot Synopsis Anger, desire, and jealousy fuel a bitter family reunion in this independent drama. Martin (Wayne Lamont Sims) is an artist stuck deep in a creative rut who lives in a small but comfortable home in upstate New York with Jeannette (Pamela Holden Stewart), a French �migr� who has a sizable nest egg. Martin and Jeannette have an alternately warm and deeply dysfunctional relationship, and it might seem like a marriage to some if it were not for the fact Martin is gay. One day, Jeannette gets an unexpected visit from her daughter Sierra (Margaret Burkwit), who has not been on friendly terms with her mother for some time. Sierra and her husband Andrew (Darien Sills-Evans) have come ostensively to mend fences with Jeannette, though it soon becomes clear that the matter of Jeannette's estate is also a concern. As the four conflicting personalities interact within the small house, hidden attractions become clear and long-buried secrets rise to the surface. The Reception was the second feature film from independent filmmaker John G. Young, who reportedly shot the film using digital video equipment in only eight days on a budget of 5,000 dollars. - Mark Deming, AMG Reviews Chris Barsanti Filmcritic.com Jeanette (Pamela Holden Stewart), a French woman with no visible means of support, lives in a beautiful house in upstate New York with Martin (Wayne Lamont Sims), a painter. It's preternaturally quiet, the house is shrouded in snow, and their lives are encircled by easy routine tinged with the frustration of a long-together couple. She brings coffee out to him in the barn refashioned into a studio ("dinner's at six"), he walks the dog, they drink wine and read, gently snipe at each other ("I'll take care of it tomorrow"), and go to sleep. Wake up, repeat. This is the long, quiet opening to The Reception and it's just dripping with boredom. Fortunately, Jeanette's daughter Sierra (Margaret Burkwitt) shows up with her (surprise!) husband Andrew (Darien Sills-Evans) for an unannounced visit, in order to get the dysfunctional juices flowing. Writer/director John G. Young has taken care to underlay the seemingly perfect domesticity of this privileged rural existence with plenty of emotional landmines. Unlike the assumption we're meant to make at the beginning, Jeanette and Martin are not married, as he's gay. Sierra and Jeanette haven't talked for years, as Jeanette was not exactly the best mother when her husband, Sierra's father, left her for a younger woman, leaving Jeanette a borderline alcoholic prone to abusive rages. Andrew seems an uptight urban snot completely not at home in this quiet, woodsy place. Also, it's more than likely that for all her avowed anti-maternal rage, Sierra is patterning herself after Jeanette by her choice of husband - both Andrew and Martin being black. To top everything off, it seems that by marrying Andrew, Sierra will be able to come into some family money. While Young deserves commendation for not letting this stew of recrimination, secrecy, and identity politics degenerate into a potboiling melodrama, there's no mistaking the script's irksome thinness. The borderline hysterical Jeanette and blankly selfish Sierra are here solely to be the force driving Martin and Andrew toward examining their pasts and their current place in a mostly white world. (Is the snow symbolic of this whiteness? The film's many dead spots will leave you free to ponder things of that nature.) Once the men start digging things up, a whole university seminar's worth of race, sexuality and gender issues are brought to the fore. While these issues are handled with a refreshing originality, it's hardly a substitute for the baldly declamatory dialogue and stiffly constructed scenes one has to suffer through to get there. The additional revelations sprinkled through the film are hardly surprising and barely add enough drama to the mix to keep things barely sputtering along. The Reception is only made as barely watchable as it is because of some surprisingly fine acting from especially Sims and Sills-Evans, who are given a number of well-calibrated scenes together that can only make one wonder what they could have done, given a smarter script. This is quite a decent film, made by obviously decent people, but a good attitude alone has never been enough to substitute for art. Kevin Thomas Times Staff Writer Los Angeles Times September 30, 2005 John G. Young's "The Reception" is a gratifyingly subtle and sophisticated chamber drama set on a 300-acre snow-covered estate in upstate New York. Bitter divorc�e Jeanette (Pamela Holden Stewart), a beautiful but alcoholic Frenchwoman of perhaps 40, has retreated from the world in her elegant and spacious Victorian, which she has shared for the past six years with the devoted Martin (Wayne Lamont Sims), a gay African American painter who has fled the New York dating scene. Disrupting their world, Jeanette's estranged daughter Sierra (Margaret Burkwit) arrives unannounced to introduce her new husband, Andrew (Darien Sills-Evans), and claim her inheritance, which she is to receive upon her marriage. Sierra's French grandmother, still very much alive, has bypassed her daughter, because of her drinking, in favor of her granddaughter. Jeanette insists the newlyweds stay for her birthday party the next evening and several more days so that she can hold a proper wedding reception. Jeanette and Sierra get on better than either might have imagined, but as the title suggests, events take a dramatic turn at the party. Handsome and perceptive, "The Reception" serves as a reminder that it is possible to make a polished, worldly and witty adult entertainment on a modest budget. Ed Gonzalez Slantmagazine.com intry upstate New York is the setting for this drama about a group of fuck-ups weaving the proverbial tangled web. Hoping to cash in on an inheritance, Sierra (Margaret Burkwit) and her husband Andrew (Darien Sills-Evans) arrive at her mother's home only to discover Jeannette (Pamela Holden Stewart) and her companion Martin (Wayne Lamont Sims) festering in the juices of pent-up resentments: Because the gay Martin is unable to satisfy her sexually, Jeannette takes to embarrassing him whenever she's drunk on the hooch, which consists of telling a group of people that he likes it when white men fuck him in the ass and call him a "nigger"; presumably out of sympathy and gratitude for being his patron, confidant, and savior, Martin takes the abuse in stride. Attractive looking for a feature shot on video with a budget of $5,000, The Reception's Spartan aesthetic allows director John G. Young to really tap into the story's numerously painful racial and sexual hot zones. Characters sometimes ask each other questions they should already know the answers to (Sierra may be estranged from Jeannette, but does she really not know why she didn't go to live with her mother after her parents divorced?) and the parallels between the two couples are a bit tidy, but Young has a gift for peeling away layers of deceit, interestingly allowing the dynamic between Sierra and Andrew's relationship to serve as a context for Jeannette and Martin's own-like mother like daughter, so to speak. And while Holden Stewart often sounds like a belligerent French Yoda ("He's changed me Martin has," Jeannette tells Sierra on the way to the supermarket), the performances are top-notch, especially by Sills-Evans and Sims, whose characters are shackled to their women in more ways than one. The politics may be loaded but the film is scarcely angry: Pain and resentment is equal across the white-black spectrum but everyone holds themselves accountable for their willful enslavement, ultimately choosing freedom instead of further emotional captivity. A more apt title for the film, then, might have been The Liberation. � slant magazine, 2005. |
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| THE RECEPTION 2005 - USA - 80 min. - Feature, Color Director - John G. Young |
| Genre/Type - Drama, Psychological Drama, Reunion Films MPAA Rating - NR Keywords - alcoholism, companion, estrangement, mother, newlywed, reunion, family-strife, writer Themes - Families in Crisis, Mothers and Daughters, Alcoholism, Unlikely Friendships, Life in the Arts, Creative Block Tones - Understated, Deliberate, Intimate, Talky Moods - Only Human Produced by - Black Water Films / D Street Films Release - Jul 15, 2005 (USA - Limited) Released by - Strand Releasing Video Distributor - Ventura Distribution DVD Street Date - Nov 15, 2005 Languages - English Screen Formats - Letterbox for TV, COLOR Sound - Dolby Digital Stereo Studio - Strand Home Video DVD Sides - 1 Features - Commentary by director and cast members / Original theatrical trailer Cast Pamela Holden Stewart -- Jeannette Wayne Lamont Sims -- Martin Margaret Burkwit -- Sierra Darien Sills-Evans -- Andrew Chris Burmeister |
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