Two Family House
Raymond De Felitta's Sundance 2000 Audience Winner is a sweet little romantic drama set in the insular Italian and Irish neighborhoods of 1956 Staten Island. Narrated with the conversational ease of a bar story, it stars Michael Rispoli as Buddy, blue-collar Italian American with big dreams, a golden voice, and a history of failed business schemes. His latest scheme involves turning a two-story firetrap into a bar with an upstairs apartment, but first he has to evict the squatters he inherited with the house: an abandoned young Irish mother (Kelly Macdonald) and her half-black child. Guilty over his hardhearted decision, he sets them up in an apartment and essentially adopts them. An unlikely friendship begins in clashes and verbal fireworks and turns into a gentle romance while Buddy confronts his own prejudice and smothering cultural values.De Felitta is uncharacteristically generous to both his clannish working-class chorus and Buddy's wife Estelle (Kathrine Narducci, fromThe Sopranos), who undermines her spouse's efforts and ridicules his ambition out of sheer conformism. Rispoli, by contrast, is accepting and warm as a guy hungry for his piece of the American dream, and Macdonald's scrappy single mom is full of Irish dander that melts into a romantic sparkle and loving support.Two Family Houseis inspired by the true story of writer-director De Felitta's uncle, and there's an engaging modesty and loving understanding in this portrait of one man's rebellion against the stifling values and judgmental intolerance of his community.--Sean Axmaker