Guy (Jason Palmer) and Madeline (Desiree Garcia). Photograph by W.A.W. Parker.<\/p>\n
Damien Chazelle\u2019s impressive debut film Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench<\/em> represents an amalgam between the realist aesthetics of the New American Cinema of the late 1950s and 1960s and the free-form casualness of the French New Wave. It pays homage to American musicals and Jacques Demy\u2019s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg<\/em> (1964) through its opening iris shot of an umbrella and montage sequence of Guy (Jason Palmer), an African-American trumpeter, and Madeline (Desiree Garcia), an aimless graduate student, who appear to break up on a park bench.<\/p>\n Following their breakup, Guy takes down and hides a photo of the two of them in his apartment. The story flashes back to one week earlier, where we see Guy giving Madeline lessons on how to play the trumpet. After she blows a horrible note, she comments, \u201cIt sounds like someone\u2019s dying.\u201d To Guy, whose entire life is expressed through music, that might matter more than we realize. From a jam session, where Madeline observes Guy play, the film shifts to another young woman Elena (Sandha Khin), who watches a street juggler perform and then gives him a buck and her phone number. Nothing comes of this, but it establishes her character, especially once she gives him two names \u2013 her real name and fictional one.<\/p>\n Elena later succeeds in picking up Guy on a crowded subway. The scene is conveyed through a remarkable series of wordless shots \u2013 their feet and hands brush ever so lightly against each other; oblique glances turn into knowing eye contact, before she boldly slips her two fingers into his pants pocket. As Madeline studies alone, the film circles back on itself as we glimpse Elena in Guy\u2019s apartment, where Guy again stashes the photo of him and Madeline.<\/p>\n Guy attends a party that turns into a musical as the camera pans back and forth between energetic singing and tap-dancing in one room and Guy playing trumpet in another. The exuberance of the scene provides a telling contrast to the staid grad student gathering that Madeline splits out of boredom. After documentary shots of her walking through Boston, the camera frames Madeline, who breaks into a song about her relationship with Guy as she strolls through the park: \u201cIt happened at dawn; it happened in this park . . .\u201d The scene ends as she sits down on a fountain, so that half of her is covered by a sheet of falling water.<\/p>\n The film uses a parallel structure to follow the lives of the three characters in what becomes a romantic triangle. Madeline hooks up with another guy, who insists on waiting for her while she gets her hair cut at a beauty shop, but she abruptly ditches him afterward. Meanwhile, as Guy and Elena shower together, she asks him about his plans for the day. Guy tells her that his family is visiting, but doesn\u2019t attempt to include her. Her hurt reaction registers clearly in a profile shot of her face, as she splashes water on it.<\/p>\n The family\u2019s visit exemplifies the film\u2019s elliptical style. In a wide shot, four family members carry their luggage down the street and into Guy\u2019s apartment. We expect to be introduced to them, but Chazelle resorts to synecdoche instead. As Guy teaches his mother how to play the piano, the camera ends up focusing on their fingers hitting keys. The film then cuts to Elena lying pensively in bed. Guy plays the trumpet loudly the next morning. When she complains, he claims that he\u2019s working on a piece for her. As she stews in the bedroom, Guy comes in and blows his trumpet again, indicating the growing tension between them.<\/p>\n Madeline departs to New York City, where she meets an older guy (played by the filmmaker\u2019s father, Bernard Chazelle) in the park. He sings in French while cooking for her in his apartment. After trying on a hat at an outdoor stand, Elena also ends up going home with a middle-aged stranger, Frank (Frank Garvin), but his twelve-year-old daughter (Alma Prelec) is unexpectedly there, and the three of them awkwardly play a game of \u201ctwenty questions.\u201d<\/p>\n When Guy plays a tape of the earlier jam session, it causes a flashback to the actual event. The film cuts from Guy\u2019s expression to his pounding on the door of Madeline\u2019s apartment, but her landlords indicate that she\u2019s in New York. Madeline returns to her job at the Summer Shack, where she learns about Guy. As she cleans the nearly deserted restaurant, she sings and dances an elaborate musical number about \u201ckissing the boy in the park,\u201d which ends with her sitting on the park bench before the two ex-lovers finally meet up once again<\/p>\n Some reviewers have struggled with the legibility of the film. Chazelle employs an episodic and elliptical style of filmmaking that\u2019s less concerned with narrative coherence and dramatic arcs. Even after two viewings, I\u2019m not sure I completely grasp the circularity of its structure or the time frame of Guy\u2019s relationships with either woman. Yet the film\u2019s concern for spontaneous and impressionistic 16mm black-and-white camerawork, musical interludes and choreographed dance numbers more than compensate for the film choosing to ignore certain rules of classical narration.<\/p>\n Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench <\/em>is much more of a mood piece. Chazelle is able to get wonderfully naturalistic performances from his nonprofessional cast. Sandha Khin\u2019s outgoing manner provides a striking contrast to Desiree Garcia, whose introverted character, other than when she sings and dances, is conveyed mainly through her silence and piercingly sad eyes.<\/p>\n Jason Palmer doesn\u2019t play a jazz musician \u2013 he is one. His body language and musical talent convey his character better than any dialogue, which is kept to a minimum. That was a deliberate strategy on the part of the director and the film\u2019s gifted music composer, Justin Hurwitz. Chazelle explains in Interview<\/a>: \u201cI think we both really wanted the music to be a character in its own right, and the key storytelling device in the movie \u2013 the thing that was really going to tie it together, convey emotion, and say what the characters couldn’t say. The movie is really about shy, inarticulate people.”<\/p>\n Madeline on a Park Bench <\/em>might be about a generation of shy, inarticulate young people, but the film has such an invigorating style that Chazelle\u2019s tale of broken Beantown hearts feels strangely uplifting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Guy (Jason Palmer) and Madeline (Desiree Garcia). Photograph by W.A.W. Parker. Damien Chazelle\u2019s impressive debut film Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench represents an amalgam between the realist aesthetics of the New American Cinema of the late 1950s andRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4343,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions\/4343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}