Lingua Franca
First screened in September 2021 / Most recently screened and reviewed in November 2024
Director: Isabel Sandoval. Cast: Isabel Sandoval, Eamon Farren, Lynn Cohen, Ivory Aquino, Lev Gorn, P.J. Boudousqué, Leif Steinert. Screenplay: Isabel Sandoval. In Brief:
Both formally and politically, a quietly ambitious revealing of overlapping themes and uneasily aligned characters.
VOR:④
Complex lives of undocumented immigrants are seldom evoked with such rich subjectivity. Nor are trans* lives. Nor are semi-unwitting antagonists.
Sometimes a movie you really like just keeps deepening and evolving into a movie you love. Sometimes that happens because teaching movies is a great position from which to keep noticing more nuance and complexity: within individual story beats and stylistic gestures, and across the shape and arc of the whole. Sometimes you're furious that the world has grossly conspired to again make a film so profoundly timely, when you'd hoped it could shift into becoming a time capsule. I loved watching this movie again with a group of students who aren't even mine, and I loved over-preparing for my presentation to this class because the images, performances, deceptively complex editing strategies, and refreshing departures from template in Lingua Franca are all so invigorating to spend time with, even (or especially?) on third or fourth viewing. Grade:B+
